University Business - January 2012 - (Page 44)

Boosting By Marcia Layton Turner the Bottom Line A Auxiliary services as revenue generators and resource savers s the name reveals, auxiliary services will never be directly related to the core mission of colleges and universities. But as ever-tightening resources have become the reality for institutions, the revenue-generating possibilities for these departments have become more important than ever. By definition, auxiliary service departments provide nonacademic support services to their campus communities. What that really means is that they help colleges and universities leverage existing resources—from bookstores, residence halls, and conference centers to parking lots, transportation, and technology, as well as faculty and staff—for everyone’s benefit. By utilizing campus assets more effectively, at greater capacity, auxiliary service departments generate incremental income that help to fund the university’s infrastructure and/or reduce fixed and variable costs. Providing Flexibility for Students Belmont University, near Nashville, Tenn., has students like those found nearly everywhere else, in that when it comes to flexibility, they want as much as possible—especially with respect to meal plans. Yet, parents and administrators, on the other hand, mainly want to be sure students are eating healthy meals. The compromise has been that Belmont freshmen are required to buy one of three meal plans offered: 20, 16 or 14 meals per week. Older students, however, can choose to purchase any of those three plans or a 10, 8 or 5 meal-perweek plan, explains Kyle Grover, Sodexo’s general manager of the school’s food service program. More than one-third of the university’s 6,500 students are on some form of a meal plan. Since like most institutions, Belmont pays its food service contractor (in this case Sodexo) a portion of the money received from students for food services, and retains a portion to pay for its operating costs, the more students who buy some form of a meal plan, the better the financial situation is for both Belmont and Sodexo. One relatively new component to Belmont’s meal program is FlexMoney, which is called Bruin Bucks on campus. FlexMoney is a credit that students buy—$1 equals one Bruin Buck—that can be spent outside of the residence hall cafeterias at one of the campus cafés and snack bars, or offcampus, at one of the local restaurants. For the last five years that Bruin Bucks were offered, only two off-campus vendors participated: Papa John’s pizza and Smoothie King smoothies. While the program was a welcome addition to the campus food service offerings, students asked for more options—and more flexibility. In response, Grover and his team, including Brandy Miley, marketing manager, along with Don Purdy of Belmont’s auxiliary services department, began working to sign up new offcampus vendors. Belmont students now have eight vendors and restaurants to choose from. The benefits of expanding the FlexMoney program are three-fold, explains Grover. First, students have more options, as requested. Second, area restaurants that participate are given access to a captive audience, of sorts, who have the potential to dramatically increase restaurant revenue. And third, since Belmont negotiates a percentage of sales as payment from restaurants for being included on the designated list of vendors, “FlexMoney generates funds for the university,” says Grover. More importantly, he says, “It’s a new, better way to deliver food to students,” but that diversity in food delivery continues to provide incremental revenue, even when students are not eating in the campus dining halls. The plan is certainly working, as Sodexo has helped increase meal plan sales by $500,000 in the past four years. 44 | January 2012 universitybusiness.com  http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - January 2012

University Business - January 2012
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Human Resources
Campus CFo
Getting Carded
Choosing telepresence
boosting the bottom line
Printer Purchase Pointers
Money Matters
Viewpoint
End Note

University Business - January 2012

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