Walking through the side doors of Hendricks Chapel, students are greeted with the fresh smell of brewing coffee and a comfortable coffee-house charm.

Though this little cafe, appropriately named People’s Place, has been serving the campus for more than 30 years, it may be the school’s best-kept secret.

Instead of heading to the more trendy Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts for a morning caffeine fix, some students, including freshman Heather Bowes, head to what has been nicknamed the Place.

‘I thought it was different, with the bagels lying out and get-your-own pastries,” said Bowes, a public relations major.

The counter is surrounded by hand-painted signs advertising coffee, Snapple drinks, yogurt, fresh fruit, soups and sandwiches. To the left of the counter is a chalkboard displaying the menu in a variety of colors. Above the table filled with bagels and condiments is a bulletin board covered by flyers promoting campus events, many of them political or environmental.

A white cupboard packed with cookies, cinnamon buns, donuts, muffins and brownies is appropriately tucked away beneath the counter.

When she entered the Place for the first time, Bowes said she immediately noticed its alternative vibe. The shop opened in in 1971, after a mother and son began selling cookies and coffee to students.

‘They just had a pot of coffee and a bag of cookies that they spent all week making,” said manager K.C. Duggan, a senior in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. “Then they would sell them between classes.’

When the shop opened 31 years ago, it was not only a place for serving refreshments, but a political and creative forum for students. The Place hosted activities such as story readings at noon with free crackers and milk, Yoga, bread-making, weaving and macram sessions, according to a Daily Orange news article from Nov. 9, 1971.

Professor James Newman remembers when it opened, the Place served as a gathering point for cultural revolutionaries.

‘It had a counter-culture feel to it,’ he said. ‘It was a place for real people to gather. It was all part of the Vietnam era, and was meant to symbolize a resistance to the status quo, big businesses.’

But today, that feeling has changed.

‘It’s lost its political function,” he said. “It’s become an alternative place to grab a snack.’

The cafe has maintained its independence from the university, run completely by students. Today, the staff of 13 work-study students and three managers control the shop’s operation. Its independence allows it to sell Coca-Cola products, a huge hit among students sick of the standard Pepsi brand selections elsewhere on campus.

The shop, which is open from 8:15 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Thursday and from 8:15 to 4 p.m. Friday, sells its hot beverages for only a handful of change. Day-old sandwiches and pastries are sold at a discounted price, and workers and customers claim the ‘day-olds’ are just as tasty as their fresher counterparts.

Each week, the cafe offers a featured beverage, selected by the employee working the 7:30 a.m. Monday shift. One major crowd-pleaser, the Austin Powers, was created and named by an employee who concocted the drink for himself in 1999 and named it after the Mike Myers film.

The shop also offers Free Trade Coffee, which is also served at other campus cafes including Food.com and Studio Break, and produced by a non-profit organization that says its coffee is better for farmers, who are not always ensured decent wages with other brands. The coffee is also organically grown. Worker Josh Kohout, a junior international relations and German major, said after a big push from activists the shop reduced the cost of Fair Trade Coffee to that of the other coffees.

Since the Chapel tries ‘to make a conscious analysis of how we live in the world,” it was appropriate that People’s Place sell Free Trade Coffee, said The Rev. Tom Wolfe, dean of Hendricks Chapel.

‘We have an obligation to explore and promote the alternative,” he said, adding that he thinks the Free Trade coffee is the best in the house.

The biggest drawback to the business is that it does not accept the SUpercard as payment. But if it did, the shop would need to be controlled by the university, and it would lose its grassroots feel, said worker Courtney Hard.

‘If it was owned by the university, we wouldn’t be able to sell Coke and it wouldn’t be so cheap,’ explained Hard, a chemistry major.

And for students tapped for cash, since you can’t use your SUpercard at the vendor, People’s Place offers a ten-cent discount on all hot beverages if students use their own mug. This discount usually ‘gets a lot of people to come back,’ Kohout said.

The shop is a non-profit organization, so that status helps keep costs down. All of its profits go to Hendricks Chapel.

People’s Place orders its food from a bakery in downtown Syracuse, and has its beverages such as Snapple and Nantucket Nectars shipped directly from the companies’ suppliers. This hand-on business experience serves as a great learning opportunity for students, said staff member Ellie Grose, a senior psychology major.

‘You work with your peers, which can be hard, but it’s a huge benefit,” Grose said. “It’s an experience you can’t get anywhere else on campus.

‘Everyone who works here depends on everyone else. We’re a family.’

Published on October 16, 2002 at 12:00 pm