New vendors take over student center services

Seven beers on tap, homemade brownies and Nopales (cactus) salads are just some of the new items that will be offered by three new vendors in the Cesar Chavez Student Center.

The Pub, Cafe 101 and La Taqueria submitted proposals and were selected by the Student Center Governing Board at the end of last semester when contracts expired for the old owners.

The main priority in evaluating the proposals was what the different vendors would be offering to the students, according to Guy Dalpe, the director of SCGB.

"The goal is to make the center an exciting place for the students," Dalpe said. "Hopefully we are successful at that but we won't really know until we hear the response from the students."

All three vendors who were selected expressed a desire to hire SF State students, improve wheelchair accessibility, lower prices, and add vegetarian fare and new specialty food items to their menus.

Other than remodeling and variations to their menus, the main theme of the new vendor services will be in keeping with the old owners--Yerba Buena Taqueria, The Upper Division Pub and the Underground Cafe.

Other criteria used to evaluate the proposals were rents offered, proposed menus, hiring practices and commitments to renovating, according to Raymond Lee, fiscal officer of SCGB.

Allam El Qadah, SF State grad student and owner of The Pub, knocked down a wall to make his place more spacious and said he will not add more tables.

"It will be more accessible for some of my regulars who are wheelchair users," El Qadah.

He will also specialize in micro-brewed beers and meals that include salad and bread. In an effort to make things more convenient for students, he is now offering pizza made from the pizzeria in the lower level of the student center.

"Now students don't have to wait in two lines," El Qadah said. "Before they would go downstairs to purchase the pizza and by the time they got back upstairs to buy the beer, their pizza would be cold."

Carmelina Narciso, owner of La Taqueria, will periodically feature different Latin foods such as pupusas, a specialty of El Salvador, in addition to burritos, quesadillas and tacos. She will also be opening the new tostada bar soon which was remodeled to be wheelchair accessible.

Faculty member Jose Ledon thought the place looked fresher and cleaner and added that the burritos tasted healthy and delicious.

Cafe 101 will be featuring different types of coffees such as French Roast, Sumatra and organic coffee from Mexico as well as pastries and croissants, according to owner Bob Sanchez.

Kim Lewis, an English literature major, said the brightness of Cafe 101 was a nice change and thought the ability to order a non-fat mocha was an added plus from last semester.

Even though some students were pleased by the changes, many simply offered an apathetic shrug when asked about the taste, prices and decor of the new vendors.

Two students, Jason Shifrin and Humberto Tam, who did offer comments, said they didn't like the new decor of Cafe 101. They said the mustard yellow wall and florescent lighting made the cafe seem too bright and cold, and they agreed that The Pub had better food, music and decor last semester.

"They don't have a (San Francisco) look," Shifrin said of the bright lights of both the pub and cafe. "The Pub looks like a meat market," he said, referring to the clear butcher-style case visible from the entrance. "I feel like going in and ordering a half pound of ground beef."

[ back to Golden Gater Online September 7, 1995 ]

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