In March, during the last week before spring break, Espwesso Student-Run Cafe Manager Cypress Hubbard-Salk ’24 noticed a concerning anomaly in Espwesso’s income account: their February income had not been fully deposited into their account by Wesleyan’s Auxiliary Services, which processes the points collected from the cafe and deposits the resulting funds into its income account. 

The same week, Hubbard-Salk received an email from Director of Student Involvement Joanne Rafferty informing her and Espwesso Financial Manager Sophia Chen ’25 that they needed to meet to talk about the status of Espwesso. However, with midterms in full swing that week, Espwesso’s managers and the Office of Student Involvement (OSI) were not able to meet until during break, leaving the cafe running as usual.

When they did meet, Hubbard-Salk and Chen were greeted with startling news: Espwesso had a cap on the number of points they could earn per year of 24,000. They had reached around 32,000 points (the exact number could not be verified), 8,000 in excess of their maximum, and so those 8,000 excess points had not been deposited into Espwesso’s income account. It was not clear whether Espwesso would be able to continue accepting points, nor was it clear what would happen to the 8,000 points. 

While this is the first time that Espwesso has reached its points cap, the group’s unawareness and confusion regarding regulations  is not an isolated event. Wesleyan Local Food Co-op is the only other points-accepting student organization at Wesleyan; since these two are formal student organizations, they do not have contracts with the University as do Red and Black Café (RBC), WesWings, and Star and Crescent (S&C). However, since they accept points, the two groups are subject to restrictions outlined in Wesleyan’s contract with Bon Appétit, the University’s primary food contractor.

Just 12 hours before the Co-op sign-up form was to be released for the Spring 2024 semester, Co-op’s leader, Cate Goodwin-Pierce ’25, was informed that several Co-op providers were not “approved” by Bon Appetit and so could not be purchased from. The release of the form had to be pushed back, and contracts with providers had to be canceled until the providers could complete the verification process, many weeks later.

Restrictions regarding dining contracts are not always communicated in a consistent, clear fashion. The responsibility for sharing information about points caps and other regulations officially lies with OSI and the managers of Co-op and Espwesso. In reality, though, this is not a reliable system. Management of Co-op and Espwesso can be shaky—students have varying degrees of dedication and will not always take the necessary time to find out what restrictions they are subject to or pass the knowledge on to the following manager.

The restrictions on student vendors are not always enumerated in clear, accessible documents. Instead, they have taken shape in long email chains between Auxiliary Services, Bon Appetit, and previous student managers. There is no system in place for ensuring that current managers are made privy to these exchanges or to impress upon them the importance of being aware of the restrictions that do exist.

The only communication that Auxiliary Services could find that referenced points caps is an email that dates back to October 2012. The last time that these emails were shared with Espwesso’s management was in 2020, right before the cafe closed due to COVID-19. 

Seeking a comprehensive overview of how Espwesso functioned when she became manager, Hubbard-Salk reached out to OSI during the Fall 2023 semester to inquire whether a contract existed between the cafe and the school. She was informed that no contract existed but was not told that Espwesso was subject to a points cap. 

Hubbard-Salk and Chen entered the year hoping to accumulate savings in order to guarantee Espwesso some longevity in the case of unforeseen difficulties or negligent managers. It was exciting, therefore, to see Espwesso’s popularity grow to previously unseen levels over the course of the year, but Hubbard-Salk made clear that she would have been willing to serve fewer customers had she known that was necessary. 

“There were such busy shifts,” Hubbard-Salk told The Argus. “We would have loved to lessen demand.”

During the first week after spring break, Hubbard-Salk and Chen met with Rafferty and OSI Fiscal Management Coordinator Lisa Rogers, as well as Director of Auxiliary Services Michelle Myers-Brown, to clear up the confusion surrounding Espwesso’s status. Could they accept points? Would the points earned land in Espwesso’s income account? Did demand need to be lowered?

In the meeting, Myers-Brown explained that any subsequent points collected by Espwesso would be transferred to Bon Appetit’s account, not Espwesso’s. They could stay open but would have to use savings to cover supply and labor costs. They would not make any money from the drinks sold. 

The University’s food ecosystem, essentially, is not a free market system, despite the multiple vendors that exist on campus. Bon Appetit is guaranteed a certain percentage of the total points pool in existence, and the remaining points are divided up among all the other food/drink providers on campus. Bon Appetit’s budget, therefore, is determined in advance at the start of each fiscal year. For Espwesso to earn an extra 8,000 points would mean putting Bon Appetit at a loss of 8,000 points (assuming all else is equal—many students purchase extra points and spend them at Bon Appetit locations). 

According to Myers-Brown, the University meal plan is built around Bon Appetit’s dining options, and that is why point caps and other restrictions, such as preventing donations to the S&C or restricting S&C prices, exist. 

“All these other locations are treats on occasion,” Myers-Brown told The Argus. “It’s not meant for you to be eating all your meals there…the meal plans are set so you can have nutritious meals, whether you’re grocery shopping, going to Marketplace, Summerfields, whatever.”

As Myers-Brown explained in the meeting, this predetermined budget meant that Bon Appetit would need to keep the 8,000 extra points that Espwesso had earned. They would give it to Espwesso as a loan in order to cover operating expenses incurred while earning those excess points; the loan will need to be paid back by the time budgets are balanced at the end of the year, around May 1.

It was only at the meeting that Espwesso’s exact relationship with OSI became clear. OSI acts as a de facto manager of Espwesso, although in a hands-off manner. Lisa Rogers is the point person for contact with Espwesso’s student management. This, however, was never made clear to Hubbard-Salk: It was only after corresponding with staff at the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship that Hubbard-Salk even knew that the OSI was supposed to be a point of contact in any capacity.

“I’ve now realized…if there is any issue I go [to] Lisa,” Hubbard-Salk said.

Since continuing to accept points would mean incurring an ever-increasing debt, Espwesso will be cash-only, including Middletown Cash, for the remainder of the semester. However, this poses some problems. Espwesso’s card reader defaults to using points over Middletown Cash, meaning that any student possessing both will not be able to select Middletown Cash as an option. In the meeting, neither OSI nor Myers-Brown had a solution for this. Moreover, Espwesso’s request for a card reader was not accepted; if students want to use a card, they have to set up an eStore account, which is a relatively cumbersome process. 

“Business is a hundred times worse,” Hubbard-Salk said. “We’re not making enough money to stay afloat. If we didn’t have savings, we would have to close.”

Despite needing to spend savings in order to remain open for the semester, Hubbard-Salk expressed a strong willingness to do so, accepting that it will likely drain the saved money close to zero.

“I’m a senior, and I worked so hard this year to have [Espwesso] not be shit,” Hubbard-Salk said. “Realistically, for next year, we could just stop running now. And then there would be a couple thousand [dollars in savings]. But I work too hard. I want to be able to have [Espwesso] still be a community space.”

For next year, there is no possibility of raising the points cap: the budget has already been determined. Espwesso will remain at a cap of 24,000 points, while Co-op will stay at 75,000 points—a maximum that will likely be reached; this year, Co-op made about 71,000 points, and their budget grew by $20,000 from the Fall to the Spring semester.

“We’ll just have to say that it’s a first-come-first-serve basis, or we’ll have to eliminate co-ops,” Goodwin-Pierce said. 

Now that Espwesso’s management will have a closer relationship with OSI, there is a possibility of working with the Student Budget Committee (SBC) in order to pay for repairs and other needed equipment. The espresso machine needs to receive maintenance yearly, and the cafe’s ice machine has been broken for much of the semester. 

During the meeting, OSI committed to figuring out a way to have the SBC pay for repairs reliably and expediently. In the past, according to Hubbard-Salk, getting maintenance approved by the SBC took long enough that Espwesso used an outside contractor for repairs, which had to be paid out of their earnings. 

“Given the integral role Espwesso plays as a community-building space on campus, the SBC has previously supported Espwesso with their equipment and maintenance needs,” Student Budget Committee Chair Jonghwa Kim ’25 wrote in an email to The Argus. “We are committed to continuing financial support for maintenance. For instance, we recently approved funding for a new ice machine, which they needed to continue operating.”

Espwesso’s meeting with OSI and Auxiliary Services concluded with the agreement to draft a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), essentially an unofficial contract outlining Espwesso’s organizational structure, operating hours, fees, cleaning practices, and other factors. This will serve as a clear guideline to prevent a situation similar to this year’s from occurring again. In the future—for the 2025-26 academic year at the earliest—there may be a possibility of raising the points cap when the budget is planned out. In 2010, the cafe started with a cap of 13,000 points, which has been raised several times over the past 14 years. Another raise will rely, however, on the future management of Espwesso. 

Espwesso’s closing and subsequent cash-only reopening is not really a story of malice, but one of inadequate communication and a consequent plethora of misunderstandings. As Hubbard-Salk mentioned, lowering demand throughout the year would not have been a problem, had she only known it was necessary. Perhaps these misunderstandings are symptomatic of how student organizations work: leadership will always vary in quality and commitment from year to year, and it is no surprise that the pandemic destroyed some of the communication channels that were open. 

However, the future for Espwesso looks bright. The Memorandum of Understanding that Hubbard-Salk and Chen are currently crafting in conjunction with OSI and Auxiliary Services will serve as exactly the kind of clear document that has been missing since Espwesso’s inception, and both OSI and Espwesso’s leadership is more informed of the role and relationship than previously.

 

Leo Bader can be reached at lbader@wesleyan.edu.