Business: All Night Long

Learn how smooth the transition to longer hours can be and how quickly and substantively customers can buy into extended hours.

By Christine LaFave, Associate Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 3/1/2008

Industry veteran J. Michael Floyd (r.), director of food services at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga. (Ivy ’95) knows the questions that arise when an operation contemplates expanding its hours. Chief among most operators’ concerns: whether increased sales will make up for the added costs of extending hours and how to generate interest around staying open an extra hour or two. But Floyd, who has been at Georgia for 22 years, also knows how smooth the transition to longer hours can be and how quickly and substantively customers can buy into extended hours.

Last March, Georgia’s Snelling Dining Commons became a 24-hour operation during the week. “The decision was basically my decision, and it was based on observation of what our customer counts had been in the past,” Floyd says. “When I did talk with customers … it would always receive a fantastic response.”

Floyd had directed Snelling’s move into night-owl territory over several years—the facility previously had extended hours until 8 p.m., 10 p.m. and midnight—and he says that the gradual approach helped build consistent customer interest and helped him gauge demand for still-later hours.

“You get more bang for your buck [by extending hours gradually],” Floyd says. “It kind of builds momentum.” Midnight until 2 a.m. is now the busiest time for Snelling, a 549-seat facility. Floyd notes that when Snelling went to 24 hours, it added more WiFi plug-ins to cater to students working on laptops and incorporated some soft seating into the dining room to boost the facility’s comfortable-study-spot quality. Snelling’s full menu is served until 10 p.m.; from 10 p.m. to midnight the hall serves pizza, ice cream, chocolate-chip cookies and beverages, and after midnight it offers a full breakfast (plus the always-in-demand chocolate-chip cookies).

The result of the assorted changes, Floyd says, is strong business throughout late-evening and overnight hours and a significant uptick in the number of returning students who decide to purchase a meal plan. “Twenty-five percent of our customers on our meal plans live off campus,” he says. “Every time we extended hours, we saw an increased number of off-campus students buying our meal plan.”

Floyd’s decision to have Snelling make the transition to 24 hours in March rather than at the beginning of the school year was a marketing move: “By doing it in the spring, it’s new to the customers,” he says. Service initiatives that begin in the fall or at the beginning of spring semester can get lost in the shuffle of other changes on campus, especially for new students.

“We had two months [after winter break] to market the new service,” Floyd says. Banners, newspaper ads and an e-mail to customers on Food Services’ list-serve promoted the change. On March 19, “opening night” for the all-night hours, Snelling celebrated with a party and giveaways.

“Initially we projected that we would be running about 300 [covers] a night, and what we found was we were running about 500,” Floyd says. “It’s amazed everybody how many students are out that time of night.”