Introduction

On average, Americans drink 3.1 cups of coffee each day. “65% of Americans drink it with breakfast, 30% drink it in between meals, and 5% drink it with metals other than breakfast.” Caffeine is usually consumed right after waking up to get the body ready for the day, improving alertness and to fight sleep inertia. Sleep inertia is “characterized as a decline in motor dexterity” and is usually the reason for feeling groggy and tired immediately after waking up. Caffeine overcomes these symptoms and furthermore has been shown to improve working memory performance in low doses. Finally, this article showed how caffeine, more specifically coffee, improves mood, from the anticipation of drinking coffee, the actual consumption of it to the ritual of the event of having coffee every morning.

Many students have hectic schedules that require them to take classes that start at 8 am. Since most students don’t own their own coffee maker in their dorm or house/apartment they are forced to find their morning coffee on campus. While dining halls are open and available to underclassman that still have food swipes, there aren’t many other options for those that either don’t have a meal plan or don’t have time to go off campus to get coffee. Even though there are small cafes located in some of the major buildings on campus, these cafes don’t open until 8 am, when students are already in their classes. The only cafe currently open before 8 am is the Olsten Cafe in the Whitman School of Management. Even though students who have class in Whitman have the opportunity to grab a cup of coffee before their 8 am class, this location is very inconvenient for students who have class in other buildings on campus.

Alternatives

Coffee CartsTo get students this morning kick after waking up, we initially thought that providing coffee carts in major academic buildings on campus was the most efficient approach. After talking with Syracuse Food Services we were told that they had already tried to distribute coffee through coffee carts in the past. The interview in Appendix 1 exposes why coffee carts are not the most feasible solution.

Campus CafesIn order to help students manage their time better by having the opportunity to grab a coffee on-the-go before class, our alternative to coffee carts is to open campus cafes before 8 am. Specifically, our goal is to have the Life Sciences Atrium cafe and Pages cafe in the Library open

1

before 8 am. The first cafe we aimed to open at 7:45 am is in Life Sciences because many students are either passing through or studying at Life Sciences before 8 am. After working with people from Food Services to try to implement the earlier cafe opening times, the Life Sciences cafe now opens at 7:45 am. The next cafe we are trying to open is Pages Cafe in the Library because of its central location on campus and the amount of traffic that passes through during the morning hours. Even though Schine is open before 8 am it is an inconvenience for students to have to leave to get a cup of coffee elsewhere.

Criteria

Opening on-campus cafes earlier would be feasible because it is not costly to the university; it is easy, legal, and it would be an incremental change towards making a substantial difference in the classroom. Current cafe workers already start setting up at 7:00 am, so therefore SU Food Services would not be incurring any additional costs by having to pay workers to come in earlier. Employees would continue to open the cafe as they normally would, only now they would need to start making coffee by 7:30 am instead of 7:45 am. Not only would Food Services not be incurring any additional wage costs, they would be bringing in revenue from students who buy a cup of coffee before 8 am. Even if 10 students came in before 8 am, that is 10 more cups of coffee they would have sold by the end of the day. By the end of the week, that adds up to 50 additional coffee purchases as a result of opening 15 minutes earlier. Opening cafes 15 minutes earlier solely to sell coffee would be a very simple and low cost convenience for students that would require very little of food services to change.

(Getting data from Food Services later in the week on how many students come in between 7:45 and 8:00 am in Life Sciences and Whitman)

Methods

In order to gain insight into how campus cafes are currently ran, our team reached out to Food Services. After learning that coffee carts are not the most efficient solution, we have been working with Food Services to try to open campus cafes earlier.

After interviewing Sue Smith, a Professor in the Whitman School of Management, we learned that she is a big supporter for having your daily dose of caffeine. Professor Smith even provided her 8 am students with coffee one morning. Then after observing her 8 am class and

2

administering them a survey, we found that the majority of students benefited from having coffee during their class. More findings from these two interviews are in Appendix 1.

Additionally, we administer a survey to 80 students that currently have an 8 am class on campus. Each survey question is listed in Appendix 2.

In addition to our primary research we gained valuable information from scholarly articles. In one study, researchers found that students who can manage their time well, have less academic stress and therefore it would be beneficial to open cafes earlier for the sake of lowering stress levels. The research article titled, “College students’ Academic Stress and Its Relation to Their Anxiety, Time Management, and Leisure Satisfaction,” was written by Ranjita Misra, a Professor and MPH Program Coordinator from the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences School of Public Health at West Virginia University and an undergraduate, by the name of Michelle McKean. By surveying 249 university undergraduates by gender and age, the researchers found that time management behavior had a greater effect on academic stress than leisure satisfaction studies. Essentially, the article reported that students who could manage their time had less academic stress than students who pursued leisure satisfaction studies instead of managing their time. The results of this study highlights the importance of time management on college campuses. Our project directly relates to time management and we are hoping that by opening cafes earlier, students will be able to manage their time better and therefore be less stressed and less anxious. This study supports the claim that time management is key, and opening cafes earlier will help the climate and culture of this university because it will reduce academic stress and anxiety. 

Evaluation

When we asked students a total of 80 students in a survey if they would be more likely to go to class if cafes were open before 8 am, more than half of students said yes, as shown in Figure 1 on the following page.

3

yes59%

no31%

10%

coffee/tea isn't that important

Another question asked if students would be more inclined to buy coffee or tea if cafes were open before 8 am. According to the pie chart in Figure 2, the majority of students surveyed answered yes.

yes69%

no31%

Since there are numerous cafes on campus, the survey results helped determine which cafes students would like to open before 8 am. Some students wanted multiple cafes to open before 8am, while others just chose one location. Figure 2 in Appendix 2 displays the survey results for how many students wanted a particular cafe to open before 8am. The data clearly shows that most students wanted the cafe in the Library or Life Sciences to open earlier. The majority of students want Pages Cafe in the Library to open before 8 am because of its central location on campus and it’s high traffic for those studying early. Surprisingly, even though the Whitman café has opened at 7:45 am the past couple of years, some students still said they wanted it open before 8 am. This finding revealed that student awareness will be vital to the success of future cafes that open before 8 am.

4

Figure 1

Figure 2

Conclusions

It would be in the best interest of the school and the students to open on-campus cafes earlier. The surveys indicated that if on-campus cafes were open before 8 am, students would be more likely to buy coffee before class. Additionally, students were more likely to attend class if students had an option to buy coffee. Through varied research about college students coffee consumption behaviors, the neuroscience behind coffee, and the effects of caffeine on mood and performance, we were able to identify that students can benefit from drinking coffee in the morning. Additionally, from our surveys, we found that students want cafes on-campus to be open earlier and students reported that if they were open earlier, they would be more likely to attend class.

Recommendations

After collecting data through surveys, observations, and interviews, we recommend that opening cafes before 8 am would be more feasible than having coffee carts in academic buildings. Since the cafes in Whitman and Life Sciences are open at 7:45 am, we recommend also opening the cafe in Bird Library at 7:45 am because of the popular demand for it by students. We also recommend posting new signs to make sure that students are aware of new cafe opening times. We anticipate that new signage will increase student awareness which will have a positive impact on the cafes that are open before 8 am. Figure 3 in the appendix shows the new signage for the Life Sciences Cafe. It is recommended that a sign similar to that one is made for the Whitman cafe as well.

5

Appendix 1:

Interview with Food ServicesKarissa and Liz met with the Director of Food Services, David George, as well as the Director of Cafes on campus. These two directors provided vital specifics about what has been tried on campus already, including pricing and operation hours. We discovered that a coffee cart was once used in Lyman Hall when the Hospitality Management program was still on campus. The cart itself, cost $25,000 and it was not driving a high volume of students. With that information, we realized that adding coffee carts may not be the best way to reach students since it was not successful in the past. Now we are switching our approach to see if opening the cafes before 8 am will be more incentivizing to students. We also found that in every direction of travel coming onto campus there is some sort of coffee option that is open and available for students. We discovered that the only cafe that does opens before 8 am on campus is the Olsten Cafe in Whitman. Karissa and Liz thought that opening a cafe that is at a more central location on campus, such as the Atrium Cafe in the Life Sciences Building would be beneficial to students. We brought this to the attention of both directors and they agreed to begin opening the cafe at 7:45 am on a trial basis for us. We followed up via email with them and they said that they will be implementing this change on October 31st, making sure to add signage and prop the door open at our suggestion. We continued to be in contact with them and received metrics throughout the weeks following the early opening time. These metrics showed how many students bought coffee in the cafe during that extra 15 minute window.

Interview with Professor Sue SmithProfessor Smith is a marketing professor Whitman. Professor Smith is an avid coffee drinker who noticed that her students often come to their 8 am class lacking energy. She cares deeply about her student’s success, and strongly believes in the benefits coffee plays in academic performance. She even went as far as providing her students with coffee during one of her classes to try to increase their attentiveness. After talking with Professor Smith, she said that her students were more lively than usual, but she did not tell them she was bringing coffee so it did not influence attendance. The class total is 32, however only 17 students were present for the class that Karissa attended. She also observed that at least 5 students came in late and only 2 brought coffee with them. Karissa asked them if the coffee they had been provided from the previous class had any effect on them. It turns out that 13 out of 17 students said they felt more awake and attentive, while only 4 said the coffee had no effect on them. Surprisingly, almost all of the students did not know that the Whitman cafe opens at 7:45 am and 7 out of 10 students said they will be more inclined to buy coffee or tea before class now. It seems that if more students knew that cafes were open before 8 am they would get more business. Another goal for

6

our project now is to make sure students are aware of cafe opening times (possibly through advertisements throughout campus). Our survey also asked what additional cafes they would want to be open before 8 am. The cafe in Life Sciences and the Library were the top choices. Since we got Life Sciences to open at 7:45 am this week, we are going to talk to Food Services about opening the library cafe earlier. Overall, the class seemed fairly quiet but provided valuable input for our project.

7

Appendix 2:

Figure 1:Survey Questions

Figure 2:

Schine

Slocum

Warehouse

iSchool

Eggers

Whitman

Newhouse

Life Sci

Library

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

1

3

4

6

12

12

22

37

54

Student Demand for Earlier Cafe Opening Times

NUMBER OF STU-DENTS

8

Figure 3:

9

Works Cited

Penetar, D., McCann, U., Thorne, D., Kamimori, G., Galinski, C., & Sing, H. et al. (1993). Caffeine reversal of sleep deprivation effects on alertness and mood. Psychopharmacology, 112(2-3), 359-365. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf02244933

Caffeine and mental alertness - part 1/2 - Coffee and Health. (2016). Coffeeandhealth.org. Retrieved 8 November 2016, from http://coffeeandhealth.org/topic-overview/caffeine-and-mental-alertness-part-2/

Misra, R. & McKean, M. (2016). College students' academic stress and its relation to their anxiety, time management, and leisure satisfaction. American Journal Of Health Studies, 2000(16.1), 51-61. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/210480531?pq-origsite=gscholar

Tellis, G. J. (2004). Effective Advertising : Understanding When, How, and Why Advertising Works. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Rossi, A. (2016). Do college students really run on coffee?. The Beacon. Retrieved 8 November 2016, from http://www.thewilkesbeacon.com/opinion/2015/10/26/do-college-students-really-run-on-coffee/

10