GRAND SAM: Hybrid mini mart concept Sam’s Place is one of the sturdiest pillars supporting a vibrant retail-focused dining environment at Texas Tech University. Photography by Jerod Foster

In 1998, Texas Tech University Hospitality Services (TTHS) had department revenues of around $8.2 million. Today, it's more than $32 million and is budgeted for $37 million next fiscal year.

That record was achieved while enrollment grew only about 25 percent, and the size of the residential population grew not at all. In other words, all that growth was real, achieved through identifying and then meeting the dining needs of 32,000 students — fourth-fifths of them non-resident — plus some 6,000 academic and support staff.

“We've grown by attracting other markets besides the core resident student population,” says longtime TTHS Director Dr. Samuel Bennett, who has been with Texas Tech dining for 36 years.

Key to TTHS's approach to capturing voluntary meal spending dollars is a series of conveniently located retail outlets, including two major food courts and 10 Sam's Place branded mini markets. The latter are hybrid retail concepts that sell c-store type packaged goods but emphasize foodservice.

Six of the Sam's Place locations are full size stores in or near residence halls, while the other four are Express units, minimal-footprint kiosks set in space-restricted academic buildings such as the law school and the library that intercept customers in high-traffic, otherwise-underserved environments.

If the Sam's Place units are the front line of TTHS's marketing arsenal, the heavy artillery is represented by the two food courts plus a separate set of foodservice outlets along a retail corridor in the Student Union building (which effectively function as a third food court given their compact spacing).

Together, these three multi-concept locations combine a mix of national brands like Chick-fil-A and Quizno's with proprietary brands developed in-house or by suppliers. Collectively, they post annual sales of around $8.5 million.

TTHS's attractive retail mix has spurred thousands of commuter students to take meals on campus despite a thriving commercial foodservice mix just outside the university's boundaries. This year, TTHS sold some 7,000 commuter meal plans, generating $2.7 million. That's on top of the $20.2 million in dining plan sales to resident students required to purchase a plan.

The Evolution of Retail at Tech

Until the late 1990s, Texas Tech had a very traditional, very minimal dining program that was a branch of the housing department (dining spun off to become an independent department in 2004). A series of traditional all-you-care-to-eat dining halls served the resident population, while retail was limited to a couple of snack bars.

“By the mid-90s we knew that we could do better,” says Bennett. “From what we were reading in the trade press and were hearing from colleagues, we knew that marché concepts, cooking in front of customers, was a growing trend.”

So the dining team started looking at putting in a food court that could provide that sort of dining experience. That dream was realized in January 1999 with the opening of the Market at Stangel/Murdough, a dozen-station food court that now generates some $3.9 million annually.

Six months before the Market at Stangel opened, though, another, quieter, development with even more far-reaching ramifications took place. This was the debut of the first Sam's Place in a new residential complex called Carpenter/Wells.

The small-footprint pilot site (about 1,100 sq.ft.) wasn't particularly successful, and is now gone, but it gave TTHS the first inklings of what might be possible with the hybrid mini market concept and soon led to further experimentation.