New Cafe Viv to offer organic food

The new cafe will complement the redesigned C-Store and new Witherspoon’s Cafe, which took over the original Cafe Viv’s coffee-serving function in April.

The aim of the new venture is to capture “the spirit of the Healthy Eating Lab,” USG vice president Mike Wang ’10 said, describing the new cafe as “an organic Subway.” He explained that Dining Services “want[s] to move toward a more sustainable model.”

Princeton Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) president Jenny Palmer ’09 praised the move, noting in an e-mail that “Plant-based foods are the healthiest and most sustainable foods you can eat.”

“A sustainable cafe that does not promote veganism and vegetarianism is a contradiction in terms,” PAWS vice president Alex Barnard ’09 added.

This move will result in a menu that is “more sustainable and organic by design,” Frist and University Scheduling Director Thomas Myers said in an e-mail, adding that the new menu will include items like flatbread pizza and sandwiches.

Myers noted that the new cafe will retain the name Cafe Vivian and will continue to allow students to pay for their purchases by charging their University accounts or using Paw Points.

Dining Services is considering extending the new cafe’s hours compared to those of the old Cafe Vivian and the rest of Frist, Wang said.

He added that Dining Services Director Stu Orefice and his design team were also considering making the new cafe “independent from Frist” by blocking off the east entrance from the rest of the building to allow the cafe to keep longer hours without affecting the rest of the campus center. Orefice could not be reached for comment.

These longer hours would benefit some students, such as Amy Osterman ’10, who recalled making a “caffeine run” just before Cafe Viv closed at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. during reading period, midterms and finals.

Whether or not the cafe becomes independent of Frist, it will still have “the jazzy-esque atmosphere of [the old] Cafe Viv,” Wang said.

Sohaib Perwaiz ’10 praised the decision to maintain the ambience and seating arrangements of the old Cafe Viv, whose large tables allowed students to sit down and enjoy their food and drinks while simultaneously studying.

“Cafe Viv was a nice place to go to grab some coffee and go to study,” Perwaiz explained.

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Kathryn Andersen ’08, who co-directs the Farmers’ Market and wrote an op-ed for The Daily Princetonian in April about the benefits of making Cafe Viv more sustainable, said she thought the introduction of healthier food into the cafe’s menu offerings would “actually encourage people to spend more time there.”

“I don’t think there’s a downside to putting health food there,” she said.

Other students, like Jeremy Borjon ’10, were not enthusiastic about the changes to Cafe Viv.

“I don’t really understand the push toward healthy eating,” Borjon said. “It’s easy to eat healthy in the dining halls.”

“What’s hard to find is a nice, big steak,” he noted, adding that he was glad that the new cafe would at least be serving organic meats.

Reactions to new C-Store

The new cafe will fill the void left by the departure of the Healthy Eating Lab, which was closed to make way for the redesigned and expanded C-Store.

“The problem with the healthy eating lab,” Wang explained, “was that people didn’t actually go to it.”

The C-Store is “better than before because it has more variety,” Perwaiz said, adding that there is still room for improvement and that convenience stores on other campuses have better variety.

Borjon praised additions such as the smoothie and ICEE machines but noted that many of the food items the C-Store sells are also available for purchase on the A-level of Frist.

“Yeah, it’s cool and nice and convenient to have something there, but it all seems like the same thing,” he said. “I’d like to see something unique.”

James An ’08 said that he likes the new C-Store because “there are more products offered,” but added, “Cheaper prices would be good. It seems like they’re charging a premium for goods you could buy elsewhere on campus.”