23 years later, campus says goodbye to Daily Grind

“I associate the Daily Grind with my undergraduate career.”

Graduate Tate Waddell said in the absence of clubs and fraternities, The Daily Grind Espresso Cafe was his community.

“The Daily Grind was that club and social group and family for me,” he said.

Friday, after nearly 23 years of service on UNC’s campus, The Daily Grind will turn off its espresso machines for the last time. The café’s contract was not renewed after it was announced Barnes and Noble College would take over management of the historically university-owned Student Stores June 24.

Jane Brown, owner of the Daily Grind, said at first she planned on closing The Daily Grind at the same time the Student Stores would transfer their management, but plans changed.

“Originally they were coming July 1 so our closing date was later but they moved it up a week to June 24,” Jane Brown said. “So I have all the equipment at The Daily Grind plus I have supplies and equipment in the stock room.”

“Just to keep it from being extremely stressful, I have two weeks, I have to get everything out and clean by the (June) 24.”

Director of Media Relations Jim Gregory said a joint decision was made by Barnes and Noble College and the University to move the date Barnes and Noble College would come in so people would not have to work over the July 4th Weekend to ready the Stores for the management transfer.

“If you look at the calendar, July 1 is a Friday and it’s right before the July 4th Weekend,” Gregory said. “So...it was moved up to the (June) 24 because they’re going to be working that whole weekend to close the store down — and that’s the whole store, not just the Daily Grind.”

After the decision

Waddell said not getting paid during the time he thought The Daily Grind would remain open will affect him.

“I personally have been counting on it,” he said. “That’s an entire paycheck from my standpoint. I planned for two more weeks and all of a sudden they were coming in earlier than we thought.”

After The Daily Grind closes, student-employees of the cafe can apply to work for Barnes and Noble College in the same way Student Stores student and part-time employees can apply, said Carolyn Brown, vice president of corporate communications for Barnes and Noble College.

In an email sent to student and part-time employees of the Student Stores, Vice Chancellor for Campus Enterprises Brad Ives said that application process is a formality and all employees being offered this route would be given positions comparable to what they had before.

Waddell said he and his fellow Daily Grind employees never received that email.

Jane Brown said she did not feel in the loop at all through the privatization process. She said most of the news that was broken to her was from news outlets.

“I don’t think the Students Stores knew what was going to happen to The Daily Grind either,” she said. “No one had sent me an email or given me a call or given me a letter telling me we were going to need to be out.”

Graduate Loren Wilson said Jane Brown would keep her and her coworkers in the loop the best she could, although information concerning the café’s fate often came from news stories, not the University.

“I’m sure this privatization, there were probably a trillion steps they had to go through,” Wilson said. “Bringing in an outside company, there were probably a lot of rules about disclosure and who to tell when but I do think some things did fall through the cracks.”

“I’m not even hurt as a Daily Grinder as much as an employee of Jane Brown.”

What will be missed

In 1993, Jane Brown responded to a request for proposal from the University for a coffee shop. She opened The Daily Grind, at first a coffee cart in the Pit, that summer.

Waddell said he wished the University had stood up for the small business.

“The Daily Grind seems like this tiny hole in the wall but it does a lot for this community. We do thousands of dollars of business every day,” he said.

“It’s no longer going to be a destination. Starbucks coffee is served literally everywhere, you can already get Starbucks coffee in the Pit Stop 10 feet away. The coffee is not as good so now there’s no place on campus to get nice coffee or a real espresso.”

Carolyn Brown did not specify if the coffee shop that will replace The Daily Grind will be a Starbucks or will carry Starbucks products, only that it would be a “cafe with bookstore staff.”

Mariko Davison, a UNC-G graduate, said Barnes and Noble managed the student store at her alma mater.

“The quirkiness of the UNC student stores is way cooler. It’s sad but I think that’s the way the University is going now. It’s upsetting but that’s the way the world is moving,” Davison said.

Wilson said the Daily Grind was something like a home to her when she was a student.

“I think something about Barnes and Noble and Starbucks, they do fulfill a purpose, but I think that the Daily Grind was able to be this homegrown Chapel Hill-Durham place that served Counter Culture and had all these local venders,” Wilson said.

Moving forward

Lem Butler, US barista champion and Daily Grind alum, said he did not expect the café to close.

“I just saw the amount of love the University gave to Jane and all the coworkers there I thought it would probably be around for a while,” Butler said. “It has been around for a while, but a while more.”

Butler now works as a customer service representative for wholesale accounts of Counter Culture coffee — one of the accounts Counter Culture holds is with Jane Brown, he said. The local roaster has had a good relationship with her and her business for over 20 years and will continue to have one with her other campus coffee shop, Friends’ Cafe, Butler said.

Jane Brown said there isn’t enough room at the Friends’ Cafe for all her Daily Grind employees.

“If we get busier there’s a possibility we might add another person,” she said. “But we will have to cut staff.”

“Lots of people do leave during the summer because they’re students and some people are traveling but we won’t be able to hire everyone back in the fall.”

She said even though The Daily Grind isn’t a “branded coffee,” the café has still provided quality coffee to its customers over the almost 23 years of its business.

“I think that we are just this little diverse local shop and I don’t think that’s what is coming in there,” she said. “And I feel like it’s important to have that kind of choice on campus — to have some diversity. I think it’s been an exciting place for a lot of people just because it’s different.”

“And I think people will really miss it.”

university@dailytarheel.com