The Autumn Quarter at Seattle Pacific University is coming to a close and the final leaves are falling from the trees. Walking around, you may have noticed a few Coca-Cola trucks or maintenance workers installing new equipment.
Going into Gwinn, you will see two of the Pepsi soda fountains have been replaced by Coca Cola fountains. Walking around campus, Pepsi vending machines have been removed and Coca-Cola machines now stand in their places.
According to Lynn Ernsting, executive director of University Services, the reason behind these new installations and drink products stems from Pepsi’s agreement with SPU becoming void in the Autumn Quarter.
“We’ve been partnered with Pepsi for many years, and generally that contract comes with benefits to the university. For almost every institution, their beverage contract is going to have things like sponsorship for athletics and those kinds of things. We came to the end of our contract, and we’re negotiating, and as a campus [we] decided that we were going to get some better service and better support, and all around better deal with Coca-Cola,” Ernsting said.
Since the new Coca-Cola fountains have been moved into Gwinn, workers have been periodically tinkering with the machines to get them to function properly.
Kellen O’Brien, a freshman at SPU who’s majoring in physiology, shared a few of his frustrations with this process.
“It was when I was at lunch, and both machines were down, and so you could not get any beverages. Was that annoying? That was very annoying because you were trying to eat your food and there was nothing to drink,” O’Brien said.
Problems persisted with machines, however, even after they were up and running. One of the most important features of these new drinking fountains, the ice, was not working, leaving students with lukewarm drinks.
“They should have done the switch more efficiently and not shut down the machines,” O’Brien said. “You couldn’t make your drinks cold or anything, so you were stuck with what they had.”
Another student, Rhett Miller, a freshman mechanical engineering major, shared his thoughts on the new Coca-Cola fountains.
“Coke is far superior to Pepsi, mainly because it uses the coca leaf in the production,” Miller said.
Ernsting acknowledges the problems associated with the brand transition between Coca-Cola and Pepsi and highlights the difficulties in making the switch.
“The most difficult part of that transition is that you have two different entities who have lots of physical equipment on our campus, trying to make that a seamless exit of what’s going out and entry of what’s coming in is very difficult, especially when you’re trying to do that across all of campus, sort of all at the same time,” Ernsting said.“So what you’ll see is that the Pepsi equipment and services are going to start, and product are going to go away, and as soon as we can, we get coke to come in and try to put in their replacement for those things. So the vending machines, the fountains, the product that’s in the C store, etc.”
The new fountains and the vending machines mark a new chapter at SPU as Pepsi fans begin to say goodbye to their favorite drinks and Coca-Cola fans welcome in the brand’s signature Sprite and Root Beer, which appear to be staying for a while.
