The University of Connecticut’s Department of Dining Services operates eight residential dining operations, five cafes, ten retail venues, and four Grab & Go locations. In total, we are open for more than 1,000 hours of service each week and we serve approximately 5.7 million meals per year.
Dining Services regularly reviews our operating hours and offerings across all campuses. In general, each Dining Services location should be “self-supporting” meaning it should see enough customer demand and foot traffic to justify its hours of operation in a given location.
Based on a recent review, we will be making changes to the operating hours of three Dining Services locations on the Storrs campus next semester. These changes will help ensure we are operating as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Because of low levels of customer demand, Lu’s Café (located in the basement of the Family Studies building) will be closed. As you know, Bookworms Café in the library, Wilbur’s Café in the Wilbur Cross building, and the café at the Benton are all located only a short distance away and will continue operating normally, so the closure of Lu’s should not significantly impact our customers.
Additionally, the Buckley Dining Hall will continue to be open Monday through Friday, but will no longer be open on Saturday and Sunday because of low levels of customer demand on the weekends. We will also discontinue late night hours at Putnam Refectory for the same reason.
Dining Services still offers three late-night residential dining options on campus at Whitney, McMahon, and Northwest and the hours of operation at these locations will be unchanged. Also, two residential dining locations are close to Buckley: Whitney and South, which will remain open for service on the weekends.
We hope you will understand that we do need to make changes to our operations from time to time based on customer use, demand, and for the sake of efficiency. However, our focus is always on providing the UConn community with a wide and varied array of award-winning, high-quality dining options and excellent service to meet the needs of our customers.
For more information, contact: Gail Merrill at gail.merrill@uconn.edu