THE ROAD BACK – UNIVERSITIES

Can Universities Bounce Back?

Prior to 2020 Brain & Poulter worked extensively helping universities create an engaged campus underpinned by a contemporary food & beverage offer capable of addressing the increasingly sophisticated demands of the modern student. It is clear that the great job universities have carried out in creating interactive, vibrant campus’ in the last ten years has been set back by the onset of CoVID 19.

Where to from here?

Universities in some states are no doubt in a stronger position (e. g. WA and SA) than many of those in the Eastern states. For Universities most affected there may be a short term need to re-calibrate the current provision of food tenancies to ensure that the number of food outlets is appropriate for current campus demand and sustainable for operators. To assist in providing a safe, appealing and viable food & beverage offer Brain & Poulter have developed the following services for Universities.

Strategic F&B Review:

Recalibration of sustainable tenancy numbers and highest and best use tenancy mix for a staged re-opening of F&B tenancies. B&P has created a bespoke tenancy mix assessment tool that calculates the profit/loss sustained by the various cuisines and F&B types based on the estimated building populations on campus. The calculator will help identify which tenancies will be more profitable to open and which would be best to stay closed while still meeting the demand for F&B from students and staff.

Common Area Review:

Depending on the recommended and adopted re-opening tenancy mix for the remerging campus, B&P will undertake a physical inspection of the common seating areas and amenity of campus food precincts to provide recommendations on how to make the space CoVID safe, manage queues, social distancing, messaging and expectations. The audit covers the areas of;

Seating/ Common Dining Areas

• Identifying compliant suitable seating areas
• Identifying the total number of common seating available compared to pre CoVID levels
• Identifying potential additional seating areas to address dining seating shortfall
• Identifying how to best manage capacity – enforcing compliance

Wayfinding/ Communication

• Reviewing current ravel paths to ensure compliance
• Minimising entry and exit points to ensure compliance
• Ensuring effective CoVID signage to enforce customer etiquette / behaviour is in place

Retailer Compliance

• Assessing retailer compliance – signage/ queuing zones/ eliminating common touch points

Retailer Mentoring:

It will be vital for tenants to re-open with a review of their operational model, menu, staffing and service systems to ensure they can reopen successfully.  Each tenant completes a checklist and attends a virtual mentor session with our F&B experts to develop an Action Plan focussed on the following critical areas currently impacting trading potential:

• CoVID safe protocols and messaging
• Focus on product, sales, profit margin and forecasting

B&P is actively responding to the developing COVID-19 situation by putting in place these products to support the university community.

If you need help charting how to negotiate with tenants on short/medium and long term ways to recovery, B&P can help assess what sustainable rents and concepts will be best suited through the recovery and beyond, to create engaging campus’ for all.

To know more and to speak with one of our team to book a demonstration of the products we have developed click the link below