Starbucks employees at Wells Hall make drinks and prepare food for a crowd of students on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023. The popular location is set to move to MSU's Main Library before next fall semester, according to Associate Director of Retail Dining Gina Keilen.
—There are not many commodities that college students enjoy more than coffee.
MSU supplies its students with multiple branded restaurants across campus, including two Starbucks locations. Each coffee shop has snaking lines at almost all hours of operation, making it seemingly impossible to ever receive express service.
Although students like the business, the jam-packed pathways at the Wells Hall location make it difficult to navigate to and from class, with many rooms exceeding capacities of over five hundred people. The decided solution for this issue is to move the location to the MSU Library.
“The library has been communicating with us for several years even before COVID,” Associate Director of Retail Dining Gina Keilen said. “On the Starbucks end of things with their contract, we have to renovate the store at a certain point in time so we thought this might be a good option. Instead of renovating our current space, take advantage of an academic partnership to be able to better our students.”
In terms of picking a specific location in the library, the process may be a little easier.
“It is actually the same spot that the Sparty’s is in,” Keilen said. “We are just going to renovate that existing footprint.”
The idea is to close the Wells Hall Starbucks and the Sparty’s in the library and start the renovation. The Starbucks will hopefully be opened right before next fall semester.
As for students, this change has swept under the radar.
“The library is farther from my dorm," psychology freshman Nazhani Upshur said. "So like if it was moved right now, I probably wouldn’t go there ever. I suppose if next year if it was closer to my dorm, I would probably still go.”
Upshur said coffee is not that essential to her and she just likes the taste.
Prenursing sophomore Alissa Thompson is slightly more supportive of the change.
“It would be nice to have a Starbucks in the library,”Thompson said. “Now that we are going it might motivate me to go a little bit more, but I don’t think I am going to be really bothered by it either way.”
The current location of the Starbucks is somewhat less suitable for Thompson because she doesn't have any classes in Wells.
For some, the venue change will alter the frequency of attending Starbucks in general. As for management junior Katrina Walker, this is not necessarily the case.
“I won’t be living on campus next year, so it won’t impact me as much,” Walker said.
Like other students, coffee is far from one of Katrina Walker’s main necessities.
“I get chai, so it is not that essential,” Walker said.
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