Coopérative des cafés étudiants

Committed to Providing Product and Service Quality as Well as Increasing Profits!

As the nerve centres of student life, focal points for transmitting student values and classrooms for learning business administration, the student coffee shops at Université Laval have recently become true models of cooperative entrepreneurship. The founding students who set up the Coopérative des cafés étudiants de l’Université Laval in December 2006 rose to the challenge of joining forces in order to improve standards while enabling the coffee shops and their managers to break out of their isolation and ensure quality service year after year. And judging by the initial figures, they have definitely accomplished their mission!

Seeking primarily to establish the coffee shops as a high-quality alternative to the non-student food counters on campus, the Coop quickly began to put in place the necessary mechanisms to support the development of the coffee shops. “Since the cooperative’s creation, the shops have increased their overall sales by almost 10%,” the project’s spokeswoman Karine Bouchard proudly stated. “We have also been able to open two new coffee shops in pavilions that previously didn’t have one. And, in addition to these two shops, two other projects are currently in the making.” With the aim, among other things, of providing on-going technical and administrative support to their members and improving the economic and organizational effectiveness of the coffee shops, the students in charge of the Coop have already developed a number of tools to help managers improve the hygiene and sanitary conditions of the shops, make their accounting management easier and find suppliers who offer better prices and a better service. “By negotiating agreements with common suppliers, the shops could save between 5% and 10% on the cost of supplies,” explained Karine Bouchard.

Based on such strong values as democratic management, healthy eating, surplus redistribution, respect for the environment, quality of service and the promotion of local and fair-trade products, the Coopérative has succeeded in establishing dialogue between the different coffee shops which, with their genuine popularity, can now fully exploit their potential.

“We can but applaud the relevance of this collaboration between the student coffee shops which, thanks to students, will bring tangible results for the students at Université Laval by improving the management effectiveness of the shops affiliated with the Coopérative,” pointed out Benoît Caron, general manager of the Coopérative de développement régional Québec-Appalaches.

With a cumulative turnover of $1.75 million, thirty or so employees and about a hundred volunteers, the Coopérative des cafés étudiants has become an extraordinary driving force for the development of student entrepreneurship. As a result, the organization now has the means to set up the Coop des cafés, which will initially be in charge of about twenty coffee machines on campus. The project will enable the coffee shops to reduce coffee machine operating costs by 20% to 30%.

Given the progress already made in less than a year, it can only be expected that the Coopérative des cafés étudiants de l’Université Laval will continue to challenge the established way of doing things for the greater benefit of the entire student population.

Coopérative des cafés étudiants