Papalinos Cardinal Towne closed

I just read this and feel really bad about the student meal plan. I had to pay a meal plan for my daughter who was a commuter. I believe Bazo's was not part of it either, right? But CHICK FIL A is? U of L evidently needs to work harder to get local owners involved, this is really sad.

Is Windy City pizza still open down there on 4th? If so people still have one of the best options in the city by UL.

Alas, Windy City appears to be no more. There is a "For Lease" sign on the building.

As regards SuperChef breakfast at Cardinal Towne...we love SuperChef and patronize their Lower Brownsboro location. But our first reaction to the news about the new location near U of L was as stated above -- it's pretty pricy for the college crowd.

Is Windy City pizza still open down there on 4th? If so people still have one of the best options in the city by UL.

Alas, Windy City appears to be no more. There is a "For Lease" sign on the building.

As regards SuperChef breakfast at Cardinal Towne...we love SuperChef and patronize their Lower Brownsboro location. But our first reaction to the news about the new location near U of L was as stated above -- it's pretty pricy for the college crowd.

Aw man that stinks! It had been years since I'd been there, never went back after I moved from Old Louisville.

http://wfpl.org/post/restaurants-face-uphill-battle-cardinal-towne-diners

Restaurants Face Uphill Battle for Cardinal Towne Diners

By Ashlee Clark Thompson

Cardinal Towne seemed like a good location for Papalinos NY Pizzeria to open a second location.

Bolstered by the success of the restaurant’s Baxter Avenue store, co-owner Shelly Hernandez says she and her husband, co-owner Allan Rosenberg, rented a space in Cardinal Towne, a mixed-use development on Cardinal Boulevard. Sandwiched between the University of Louisville Belknap campus and Old Louisville, the location had the potential to draw patrons from two distinct communities. They opened the Cardinal Towne Papalinos store in August 2011.

Just over a year later, the ovens have gone cold. Hernandez and Rosenberg closed the Cardinal Towne restaurant and are now operating solely out of the original Papalinos location on Baxter Avenue.

“We did not want to do it, not in the least bit,” says Hernandez.

Commuter Campus Life

Papalinos’ short life on Cardinal Boulevard reveals a tricky situation for restaurateurs who have taken up residence in Cardinal Towne. Though a wealth of students and an entire neighborhood surround the row of eateries, Papalinos and others have to compete with mandatory meal plans, slow foot traffic and a community that hasn’t fully embraced Cardinal Towne’s retailers.

“No one thinks of driving down to that part of town unless there’s a game or something with the university,” says Nathan Quillo, owner/operator of Quills Coffee, another Cardinal Towne tenant.

Quillo says that it seemed like a no-brainer to open a coffee shop in Cardinal Towne. But “good locations might not be great locations,” he says. Quillo, who has attended U of L, says the school is still a commuter campus—students drive in for class and go home without spending much time on campus.

A representative of Cardinal Towne could not be reached for comment.

On-Campus Competition

Cardinal Towne restaurants also compete with on-campus options. Most students are required to have meal plans that can only be used for dining services the school provides exclusively through Sodexho, says Larry Owsley, vice president for business affairs at U of L. The meal plans are also mandatory for commuter students who meet certain criteria.

U of L adopted the meal plan policy in 2008 as part of a 10-year contract with Sodexho, who provides the dining services. There are three tiers of meal plans that cost $175, $930 or $1,460 per semester. Prices are based on the residence hall in which a student lives and the number of credit hours a student takes at the Belknap campus, according to U of L’s website.

A meal plan makes students turn to on-campus dining first, but the 8,476 students on the $175 meal plan option “would have money to spend at the retail outlets at Cardinal Towne,” Owsley says.

But Hernandez said the meal plans did affect her business. “Students don’t have a lot of extra income,” Hernandez says. “It has an impact.”

Students can use Cardinal Cash, an account separate from meal plans, at on- and off-campus retailers, including Cardinal Towne retailers The Comfy Cow, Qdoba, Jimmy Johns and Home Run Burgers. But Hernandez says Cardinal Cash at Papalinos would only bring in about $15 a day.

Back to 'Home Base'

Eventually, revenue from the Baxter Avenue Papalinos was supporting the Cardinal Towne location, which could have put both locations in jeopardy, Hernandez says. The owners decided to close the Papalinos Cardinal Towne to preserve the success of its original store.

Hernandez says it is nice to be back in their “home base” and refocused on making the restaurant “the best that it can be.” The Cardinal Towne location still makes Hernandez sad, she says, but there were valuable lessons from the experience.

“We learned how to be a little bit more leery and a little bit more business savvy,” she says.

[Robin Garr]

This is where the rubber meets the road:

On-Campus Competition

Cardinal Towne restaurants also compete with on-campus options. Most students are required to have meal plans that can only be used for dining services the school provides exclusively through Sodexho, says Larry Owsley, vice president for business affairs at U of L. The meal plans are also mandatory for commuter students who meet certain criteria.

U of L adopted the meal plan policy in 2008 as part of a 10-year contract with Sodexho, who provides the dining services. There are three tiers of meal plans that cost $175, $930 or $1,460 per semester. Prices are based on the residence hall in which a student lives and the number of credit hours a student takes at the Belknap campus, according to U of L’s website.

A meal plan makes students turn to on-campus dining first ...

Didn't this kind of thing used to be against the law? It still has the delicious warm stench of sleaze.

Didn't this kind of thing used to be against the law? It still has the delicious warm stench of sleaze.

I remember there was a big stink about this when it first happened. I forget if there was ever an actual lawsuit are not about it but if there wasn't I'm really surprised. I'm not sure how a university can demand that their students eat the food provided by a specific vendor. Many times that food is a good deal but even given that it shouldn't be mandatory!

The argument is that U of L needs to guarantee a certain volume level of student meals to gain the lowest pricing from their vendor. If alot of students don't get meals from the meal plan- the cost of providing meals rises....That also the argument for not including many outside restaurants. Not saying it's right- just that it is.

My daughter is at Western, and you are also required to have a meal plan- but for your Freshman year only. ( but it's not a commuter campus and doesn't have the same issues).

Deb

My wife was wrapping up her BA when the meal plan took effect and we had to pay for her to be on the plan. The worst part is that they limit how much you can spend in a day on your meal plan, so whatever you don't spend is lost to you. This meant we ate a lot of Subway (ick) sandwiches during her final month of classes.

And if you think this hurts Cardinal Town Plaza, try being over in the Kroger center across from the stadium...

It's all driven by money, obviously.

Here's the contract in question: http://kickoutsodexo.usas.org/files/201 ... 0_2018.pdf

UofL gets a percentage of all sales, plus another $11 million over the course of the 10-year contract.

I stopped by Papalino's for lunch today and asked Allan about it. While I'm going to respect their privacy, as he disclosed some of financial information about their decision to me that I'm not going to go into the details of on this forum; from my perspective, with my 25+ years of foodservice experience, I feel they made a good business decision.

[Robin Garr]

I stopped by Papalino's for lunch today and asked Allan about it. While I'm going to respect their privacy, as he disclosed some of financial information about their decision to me that I'm not going to go into the details of on this forum; from my perspective, with my 25+ years of foodservice experience, I feel they made a good business decision.

I think Alan gave us all the financials that we could have expected him to give us in public, and maybe a little bit more, just upstream in this thread. I can't imagine why anyone would want to know more details.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20000#p149901

The argument is that U of L needs to guarantee a certain volume level of student meals to gain the lowest pricing from their vendor. If alot of students don't get meals from the meal plan- the cost of providing meals rises....That also the argument for not including many outside restaurants. Not saying it's right- just that it is.

Gee, they could try just having good food and attracting students that way instead of having junk and mandating the students eat it! Wouldn't that be a novel approach?

Papalino's... I feel they made a good business decision.

Absolutely.