Project 40

Project Summary

There is a restaurant space in the Ross Building on York University’s Keele Campus that features a small back-room office, storage room, seating area, full kitchen, beer taps, small bar, and patio space. This space has undergone many failed attempts to establish a restaurant that can maintain financial health, serving over the past several years as the Faculty Club, the OverGrad Café (a pub/café for graduate students) and, most recently, “et al.,” a fair trade café/pub for faculty and grad students. Each of these endeavours attempted to create an environmentally sustainable community space, but none have been able to maintain financial sustainability, primarily due to inefficient use of the space and inadequate business hours. Because it is based on a university campus, any restaurant in this space experiences slow traffic periods during the summer months, final months of fall and winter terms, and midterm seasons—equating to over half of the year. Further, the space is located in a corridor with inadequate signage and no décor or style, underutilizing large portions of the area and giving it the appearance of a drab, unwelcoming space for students and faculty members. The goal of this project is to envision a use for this space that addresses community needs, wellbeing, and sustainability. The key factors to consider will be creating an economical and efficient use of the space that fits with sustainability and equity mandates, both by taking low times into consideration (no students/customers for approximately half the year) and by incorporating time- and money-saving design and technology during peak times. Students interested in this project might have backgrounds in business and marketing, economics, design, web/software development, social and environmental sustainability, and communications.

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Sustainable Development Goals