by Dylan Timmell

Over the fall semester, Hilbert College opened a new café called 78 West, bringing much excitement to the students and faculty. Hilbert’s president, Dr. Michael Brophy, went throughout the campus asking faculty what they believe would be great revision ideas for the campus. Food service director, Jessica Lively came up with the idea to have students congregate around food and involvement which was approved. The project started over the summer and was completed shortly after classes started. It has been a big change for both the campus and Lively who now oversees the campus dining hall and the café.

The Scribe: How long did the project and construction take to complete the café?

Jessica Lively: I would say the project and construction was about a month long. They had to change stuff in that backroom and then build that wall on the outside where the door goes behind which was probably about a month.

TS: Do you know who was involved in the idea of the café?

JL: Honestly, I’ve been trying to get something else here for the students. So that Dr. Brophy came and asked everybody on campus, what this campus needed that was my top things that we needed somewhere else for students to be able to eat and drink.

TS: Do you know why they named it 78 West Café?

JL: So, originally it was supposed to be 43 North which is the latitude of Buffalo. But, there is a brewery somewhere that’s 43 North so they didn’t let us use that. The longitude then is 78 West. It is the same café name we use at Daemen.

TS: Who works at the café? Is it mostly kitchen staff?

JL: Yeah, so we hired two baristas to work there Adrian and Hillary. Adrian had worked with us previously a couple of years ago and we hired Hillary as a fresh new employee so I have to help out over there. So yes, it is our staff.

TS: Is it possible students will ever be able to work alongside the kitchen staff?

JL: Yup, We hire students (in the kitchen) so it will be the same thing there. If there are more people and more staff then yes, we would hire over there.

TS: Some students have been asking about Hawk bucks, how they can be purchased and if you can use a credit card?

JL: You can do hawk bucks a couple of ways. So if you go to the link through Hilbert’s website go to living on campus, then dining and then there’s a link to our website. You can purchase Hawk bucks there or you can do it at the dining hall with cash, credit card, a check, and if parents call us we can charge them over the phone. It’s pretty simple and then as soon as we get that, funds transacted, we can add them here on the computer.

TS: What are a few items on the café that they offer?

JL: Every kind of drink that you can get at Starbucks or Spot. Iced and hot, frozen drinks and then hopefully this week we will have a cooler case that is coming that will also display salads and wraps. We got some fun pudding and desert parfaits, yogurt and granola parfaits coming and then right now currently there’s muffins and cookies there. Every day were going to do some chocolate dipped pretzels and a couple other gluten free deserts we got that we have in mind that we want to try also.

TS: What seems to be the top three popular items on the list?

JL: I would say probably the frozen hawk mocha is the number one drink, I noted when I was over there earlier this week that vanilla latte is, and probably the big cookies. Everyone wants those big cookies over there.

TS: Do you think this would help with the student involvement and engagement?

JL: Yeah, we’re trying to work on a plan where students can use the café for their events for the Agape Latte; We’re trying to figure out how we can use that instead of setting up deserts and an iced coffee bar there. So we’re still working on that so hopefully that we can get that to be used for events.