When you walk into the Falcon’s Landing at the Student Union Building, you expect to find a bustling environment full of people. The energetic feeling of Falcon’s Landing is almost a given as it features many iconic dining locations for Seattle Pacific University like the Urban Grub, Bertona Street Grill, and Handcrafted. Since the fall quarter of the 2024-2025 academic year, however, a lone location at the Falcon’s Landing has often remained desolate — Academic Perks Coffee.
The issue is nothing new. Academic Perks has been facing several problems that have left students desiring more from the location and the campus at large. One such problem, according to the General Manager of Sodexo, Andy Chaplin, is the equipment at Academic Perks, specifically its espresso machines.
“The machine is inconsistent, and we [Sodexo and Seattle Pacific] have been working with an outside company to work on fixing those and get them working correctly,“ Chaplin said.
As a consequence of the espresso machines working incorrectly, Academic Perks has been forced to display a “Limited Menu” with only a handful of drinks, none of which include coffee. Resulting in Einstein’s Bros. Bagels being the only location on campus to offer custom coffee.
Another issue associated with Academic Perks are the cafe’s hours. With Sodexo being the dining service provider for all of Seattle Pacific, besides supplying and maintaining equipment for the various dining locations on campus, the company also manages employment for its locations.
There are currently two baristas that are employed to work at Academic Perks, and no more full-time employees planned to work there in the future, according to Chaplin.
“At this point, we don’t need more than two, but we are working on looking for backup situations, backup people to be able to do it [whenever our employees cannot make it],” Chaplin said. “Closing things is not ideal. Sometimes we have to look and say, okay, how do we make sure that everything else works and everything else runs as smoothly as possible?”
Nevertheless, Abbisdy Gallegos, a first-year majoring in nursing, believes Sodexo could do more to help ensure Academic Perks is open for those that still want drinks from the “Limited Menu.”
“I think that they [Academic Perks] could change their schedule, because when I come here they’re never open,” Gallegos said. “They should extend their hours, or better them. They could definitely have more employees.”
To Austin Oenfro, a first-year majoring in business, the “Limited Menu” at Academic Perks has largely caused him to avoid the location altogether.
“I’m in class at 9:00 a.m. and, in between my break, if I knew that I could get actual coffee and not anything else, I would come in here between my break instead of going to the FedEx to get a monster,” Oenfro said. ”That’s what I do every time in between classes.”
According to Chaplin, the lack of drinks at Academic Perks has been elongated due to the machines finally giving out and the difficult process of replacing them.
“It just takes a while to get [at] as we’re working through. You get them fixed, and then they work for a little bit, and then they don’t work,” Chaplin said. “So we’re at a point where we [Sodexo and Seattle Pacific] have made a decision to purchase new machines.”
As students wait when they can finally get coffee from Academic Perks, many have found it better to get coffee somewhere else according to Gallegos.
“I think that it’s unfortunate,” Gallegos said. “I feel like a lot more people would come [to Academic Perks] if they had a wide range menu, because I know some people in my class are late to class because they go to Starbucks outside campus.”
While some students have been frustrated, other students like Abby Olmos, a first-year majoring in human biology, understand the struggles that Seattle Pacific is facing with downsizing and cutting various departments and majors.
“They’re just trying to cut back on a lot of things, and that includes staffing as well,” Olmos said. “And then that affects everything else, because it’s [Academic Perks] closed down, because nobody’s there, but nobody’s there because they can’t afford anybody being there.”
