Cabot Convenience Store Closes After Deficits

After Cabot students’ semester-long effort to save the Quad’s only convenience store, Celeris will close its doors for good on May 28, Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) announced last week.

HUDS Executive Director Ted A. Mayer said Celeris had faced heavy losses—averaging around $25,000 per year—since its inception in 2001.

Despite a brief period of gain in February 2004, Mayer wrote in an e-mail that Celeris suffered from “insufficient foot traffic,” only 65-70 customers a night.

Mayer said that as a last resort HUDS turned advertising and promotions over to students.

“We just wanted to break even for the last two months students were involved,” he said.

But Celeris has failed to make even the minimum amount needed to keep shelves replenished with Easy Mac, Ben & Jerry’s, soda, and other popular items.

“[Celeris] has never broken even, which it was designed to do,” said Cabot House Co-Master Jay M. Harris.

Harris said that although a number of students had made a “Herculean effort” to save Celeris, following a warning from HUDS in December, the store would close.

Quad residents including Dina B. Mishra ’06 participated in a final attempt to spare Celeris, supplementing HUDS advertisements by stuffing flyers in students’ mailboxes, offering cans of Red Bull as an inducement to visit Celeris, and even raffling a bicycle.

HUDS, with the aid of Mishra and her student Committee, also advertised in the Quad shuttles.

But despite the student consultation, Mishra said that the ads, which were put up by HUDS, contained spelling mistakes and mistakenly identified E entryway in Cabot House as “Entrance E.”

“These were things that HUDS could not have known, but that students certainly picked up on,” she said.

While Mishra said she understood HUDS’ predicament in funding Celeris, she said that saving the store was not a “top priority” for HUDS.

“The people who I worked with were very receptive, but I did sometimes feel like things took a long time to mobilize,” she said.

Despite the effort, many Quad residents felt that the ad campaign to save Celeris had failed.

“There isn’t even a sign outside the store,” said Alexis M. Martire ’05, who lives in Pforzheimer House and only recently discovered Celeris.

“It was a pretty bad ad campaign, honestly. It didn’t make much sense but at least it got the name Celeris out there,” said Co-Chair of the Currier House Committee Robert M. Koenig ’06.

According to Koenig, Celeris doesn’t attract the business it needs because it is not a “hang-out spot.”

“It definitely takes on a different role than the Quincy grille or the Adams Molotov,” he said. “Students don’t spend time chilling in the grocery store down in Cabot basement.”

Mishra said that an on-line survey designed last semester to investigate Celeris’ customer base and most popular hours had not told her committee what it did not already know.

“By the time we were actually able to conduct the survey, we had less optimism about the future of Celeris,” Mishra said. “A lot of times Celeris was overstocking the organic foods and those items were going to waste. Some people complained that certain items were understocked, including chips.”

She added that several students surveyed recommended that Celeris be run by students and that the store would be more successful if it didn’t employ a union worker.

“The main problem for HUDS was labor,” Mishra said. “The main suggestion that came from people in the House was that we needed to employ students, possibly on a federal work-study program.”

According to Harris, Larry D. Williams, the HUDS employee who works at Celeris from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. five nights per week, has accepted a job from HUDS working in the evenings at Loker Commons next fall.

Williams said he did not know for certain where he would be employed next year, but that he planned to remain with HUDS.

With the radio playing music, Williams sat behind the cash register with a book, peacefully passing the time.

“Working at Celeris is like being a fireman. I sit and wait for the work,” he said. “There’s a core group of students who come to support this store, and it’s pretty sad for them. But I guess there wasn’t enough pull from the three houses.”

Williams said he would miss talking to the students who swing by late at night for soda and snacks.

“I’ve got to meet a lot of kids here,” he said. “I have no problems with this job. I get to do a lot of reading.”

Jon B. Durham ’04, a resident of Currier House, said that the closing of Celeris was a “big bummer.”

With a nod to Williams, who was seated placidly at the cash register, Durham said that he would miss the “friendly staff” of Celeris.

Harris said that the Quad community has begun looking into the option of opening a student-run food operation.

“My vision would be a much smaller inventory and a student-run organization with student wages. Part of the problem of Celeris being open 42 hours a week is that the costs are too great,” Harris said. “For this to work in the future, students will have to run it.”

Mayer said that HUDS would support the endeavor.

“If Cabot House wants to run the convenience store or a grill they certainly can.  It’s their choice and HUDS, of course, would support them,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Harris said that Hilles could potentially house a new Quad convenience store.

“Whatever the new Hilles is going to contain, I would hope this would be one of the things they would find room for,” he said. “I think it would have a much better chance of succeeding than something in the basement of Cabot.”

—Staff writer Elena P. Sorokin can be reached at sorokin@fas.harvard.edu.