The fall semester began with big changes for the Moody College of Communication. From the ongoing construction on the school’s buildings, to the seemingly small changes like switching from O’s Campus Cafe to Lucky Lab in the Jesse Jones Communications building and the G. B. Dealey Center for New Media.
Though we both have openly declared our disappointment in the loss of the old Cappy’s and Woffie’s coffee shops– we especially miss their double chocolate muffins– we wanted to see if our reaction was representative of the Moody population, or if it was just the product of our hyperfixation on breakfast pastries.
The Austin-based coffee chain, Lucky Lab, opened its doors six years ago on San Antonio street in West Campus. This past fall, it opened two new locations in the Moody College – replacing the previous Woffie’s and Cappy’s cafes. With these two new locations, Lucky Lab has four establishments at the University of Texas at Austin; they opened locations at the Gates Dell Complex and the Jackson Geological Sciences building in 2022.
Cappy’s and Woffie’s were previously run by O’s Campus Cafe, a company serving UT for 24 years. According to their website, the company still has eight locations on campus, however, the abrupt removal of their two locations in Moody left their leadership and many students very confused.
Joe Sauta, owner of O’s Campus Cafe, said that his business has a contract with the University that renews annually. However, according to the contract, the University is only required to give him three months notice to dismiss them.
Sauta said their two Moody locations had been under a separate contract, created seven years ago by the previous dean, Jay Bernhardt. In April, four months after the appointment of the then newly appointed dean, Rachel Mersey, Sauta and his company were told their cafes in Moody would be replaced.
“I asked them if there was a reason. Did we do anything wrong?” Sauta said. “They said, ‘No, we just want to make a change.’ I asked if we had the opportunity to correct any perceived issues, and they said no.”
Sauta said he had tried to set up a meeting with Mersey, now interim provost, to ask about the dismissal, but his meeting request was denied.
When we reached out to Moody leadership, they declined our request for an interview as well.
“Moody College has always valued best serving our community,” wrote Kathleen Mabley, the chief marketing and communications officer at the Office of the Dean, in an email. “We announced in the spring that Lucky Lab will be our coffee and food purveyor in the CMA and DMC buildings and do not have additional comment.”
After hearing this, we wondered, how can you measure if one cafe serves the community better than another? We took it upon ourselves to gather data on the food and drink selection and prices at the previous and current cafes. We surveyed Moody Lucky Lab customers and interviewed students with varying opinions on the new establishments.
O’s Campus Cafe offered 49 different foods that included products like tacos, pastries and more. They also had a variety of bottled retail beverages like sodas, teas and energy drinks. Additionally, they had approximately seven in-house drinks, like lattes and smoothies, that could be customized with syrups and milk alternatives.
Lucky Lab offers 32 different food products ranging from sandwiches, salads, pastries, oatmeal and yogurt. They have 26 house-made beverages including their seasonal menu, a feature that was not as expansive at the previous Moody cafes. They also have bottled drinks which, according to their online menu, are various sparkling or flavored waters.
Ren Leija, a senior journalism student who uses the pronouns they/them, said they were in shock once they heard the news about the change.
“I was just so sad because I loved all of the stuff that they offered,” Leija said.
They shared that they would typically get a strawberry banana smoothie and a muffin, an order Leija said hasn’t been sufficiently replaced by Lucky Lab.
Lejia also shared the rapport they had built with one particular employee in the previous Cappy’s and is unsure of where the employee is now.
“She was always making sure that (we were) doing okay and I miss her,” Leija said.
Sauta said both the employees at the former Moody cafes were kept and relocated to O’s other locations around campus.
“That’s one of the things when you’re here for a long time … it almost has a ‘Cheers’ effect,” Sauta said. “You’ll hear them yelling somebody’s name (when) they walk in. People know us, we know them, which is a great thing.”
Though many students miss the old cafes, there are students who are happy about the switch to Lucky Lab. Ella Baldwin, a junior in public relations, enjoys a Lucky Lab chai with a pump of pumpkin and the orzo salad. Baldwin said she feels that Lucky Lab offers a variety of nutritious food that is filling. If she can’t get her orzo salad, she said she’s happy to reach for one of their sandwich options.
“Honestly, it’s a little bit more expensive than (the previous) Cappy’s, but for the price, I actually feel like I’m getting high quality food,” Baldwin said.
Baldwin said the backlash for the new cafes wasn’t surprising in a city like Austin.
“It is literally an Austin mindset,” Baldwin said. “If anything changes, people just hate on it.”
Baldwin gave us something to reflect on. Maybe we had the Austin mindset. Maybe no one even cared as much as we did.
To check this theory, we surveyed every Lucky Lab customer for 45 minutes at each Moody location to see what the mindset was for those who had transitioned over to purchasing coffee at Lucky Lab.
Out of all the customers at the establishment, almost 90% participated in our survey, 64% of those surveyed were students and the remaining 36% were staff.
84% of those surveyed had been to the previous Cappy’s and Woffie’s cafes, and 20% of them still preferred the previous cafes to the Lucky Lab locations. Half of those who had visited both cafes preferred Lucky Lab, and 30% noted that they had no preference between the two.
During our survey we also found that 100% of the people who preferred Cappy’s and Woffie’s were students. The difference between staff and student opinion could be explained by how much each group regularly spends at Lucky Lab.
We found that 55% of the staff surveyed said they never spend any money at Lucky Lab, part of a benefit called “Cup ‘o Moody,” where staff members get free drip coffee from the Moody Lucky Lab locations.
Overall, it was hard to come up with clear conclusions from this data. It’s true, only 20% of people surveyed preferred the previous cafes, but it is important to note that we were only able to survey the Moody community that was going out of their way to purchase Lucky Lab products.
When all is said and done we don’t think there’s much evidence to prove that either location was better for the Moody community.
“Sometimes I think it’s just stagnation,” Sauta said. “There’s a perception that maybe something else is better– trying something fresh, trying something new. I will give Lucky Lab their due. The way they present themselves looks wonderful. You walk in and it’s a nice appearance. So maybe that’s what the issue was.”
It’s true, we may be Austinites that hate change, but we may also just be people who are scared by how easily one can be replaced by something that is shiny and new.
