BY NICOLE POTTINGER – STAFF WRITER
Centre students love their coffee. It keeps them energized while writing and reading until the early hours of the morning, and with Sandella’s now serving a full Starbucks menu, the possibilities of coffee options are seemingly endless.
Among all the different possibilities of Starbucks drinks on campus, Centre students reveal their coffee of choice.
A quick peek behind the counter at Sandella’s shows a myriad of syrup flavors, ranging from caramel to peppermint. These syrups are the key to a tasty, sugar-filled beverage that keeps you coming back for more as your sugar high comes crashing down. In addition to the traditional hot beverages, many iced and frozen coffees are popular — especially the Frappuccino that comes in multiple flavors like coffee, strawberries and cream, caramel, and classic vanilla.
Looking around at Sandella’s, students have a variety of caffeinated beverages, including an iced coffee, hot coffee, tea, and even a bottled Frappuccino. Staff member Denzal Doneghy notices the most popular beverages ordered at Sandella’s.
“Medium blend house coffee is a big seller, but we sell a lot of caramel macchiatos and sometimes hazelnut macchiatos,” Doneghy said. “Vanilla lattes are also popular.”
Due to the cold temperatures and abundance of snow, this has caused a drop in sale of iced and frozen beverages, but Doneghy expects sales to increase as the weather becomes warmer. As far as popularity goes, different times during the week are busier than others.
“Tuesdays and Thursdays from noon until 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. are really busy due to intramurals and sports practices. I see a lot of students stay and study, very few to-go orders, and even if it is to-go, students will grab the simplest things,” Doneghy said. “Bottled Frappuccinos are a really big seller. New flavors have been added due to this, including s’mores and chocolate coconut.”
Doneghy noticed a change in some student attitudes with the advent of Starbucks within Sutcliffe. He mentioned that because the Everyday Café offers Starbucks as well, there is no sense of competition between the two as there was when Jazzman’s was inside Sutcliffe.
“Ordering is the same. Lots of students wish Jazzman’s were here instead of Starbucks,” Doneghy said. “A different atmosphere made things go a little bit smoother.”
As for Doneghy, his favorite drink to make is the macchiato. He likes to, as he says, “keep it simple.”
Junior Emily Morrell is “a huge proponent of sugary caffeinated concoctions.”
She loves anything with caffeine in it, except for energy drinks. As someone who drinks caffeinated beverages up to four times a day (including a variety of teas), she could be viewed as a coffee aficionado. While her favorite flavor is mocha, she does not buy coffee on-campus very often, only once a week. Morrell instead chooses to make coffee in her dorm in order to save money and flavor her coffee to her tastes.
Compared to Morrell, however, junior Jillian Frost drinks coffee at least once a day, every day. However, she is more likely to buy coffee from Sandella’s than she is to make it in her room. Frost buys coffee on campus at least five to six times a week, depending on her schedule. She said that while she loves all coffee-flavored beverages, her favorite is “a mocha from Sandella’s made by Denzal, because he puts a lot of whipped cream on it.”
While certain students may be wary of the change from Jazzman’s to Sandella’s, it is clear that their love of coffee has not wavered. Many students create personal relationships with those who make them coffee day after day, which only increases the likelihood that they will continue to buy coffee on-campus.
As winter fades into summer, the addition of frozen drinks will definitely keep students caffeinated during midterms, finals, and term papers.