JOHN YI/YH Yorkside manager George Koutroumanis will accept Flex Dollars because of "strong student demand."

Yorkside Pizza to offer hungry Yalies Flex Dollars

Yalies using a Flex meal plan, hungry from all those skipped breakfasts, will soon have wider choices for one essential food group: pizza. This fall, Yorkside Pizza will join Au Bon Pain and Naples as local restaurants accepting Flex Dollars from the Yale student meal plan. "Starting the Flex Dollars system here has been a lot of work and extra expense, but we've been encouraged to start up the program because of such strong student demand," partner and manager George Koutroumanis said.

The 14-meal plans allot $100 in flex per semester to be used at local restaurants, residential dining halls, guest meals, Durfee's sweet shop, and vending machines. Students who choose to use their Flex Dollars at residential college dining halls also receive an additional 10 percent discount.

Koutroumanis' family has owned and operated Yorkside Pizza for the last 30 years. Twenty-three years ago the family moved the business down York Street to its current location. The restaurant is already well-known for its varied and tasty Greek offerings and as a popular location for a late-night study break or fuel stop during a night out. "They have a pretty good menu," Janine Hoitt, MC '02, said. "The food here seems very reasonably priced." Students often come to Yorkside to enjoy late-night get-togethers because it offers a more quiet and less rowdy hangout than Naples, the other pizza place offering the flex option.

Koutroumanis readily acknowledged the student demand for Flex Dollars at Yorkside, but seemed less enthusiastic about the additional costs and changes the program would require. Merchants who enroll in the Flex program only receive 85 cents for every dollar flexed by students, and face a merchant service charge. In addition, Koutroumanis seemed uncertain about the commitment becoming a Flex merchant would require in labor and technology. He cited as expenses additional cash register help and equipment to accommodate students choosing to use Flex dollars, as well as additional employees to facilitate money exchange with Yale. However, he believes that this new system of payment will encourage increased student patronage. "We hope to see more students eating here that would normally be spending their extra Flex Dollars elsewhere," Kourtroumanis said.

Students seem to appreciate the wider opportunity soon to be available for Flex users, indicating that the program will not only be a hit with Yorkside's devoted patrons, but may affect the shape of business. Many students who formerly would not have eaten at Yorkside now say that the option of using their Flex Dollars will make them more regular customers. "I'll probably come here a lot more now," Denise Hahn, MC '02, said. "I didn't come here at all freshman year." Hahn said that the inclusion of Yorkside in the Flex Dollars trio, and its proximity to Morse College would bring her here more often.

Janine Hoitt, MC '02, agreed that more students will go to Yorkside. "[The Flex program] is worth it for the amount of additional business." Hahn agreed that Yorkside's implementation ofFlex was prudent. "Any [New Haven] restaurant depends on Yale students," she said.

However, when asked about the Flex program itself, Yale students are a little less enthused. "It's a rip- off," Hahn said of the meal plan option. "There's no way that the $100 equals the meals we lose," Kimberly Fitzgerald, MC '00, added. "I definitely think there should be more places that accept Flex. Many students feel that the Flex option would be more usable if other frequented campus eateries— such as XandO, Atticus, the Yankee Doodle, Mamoun's, Subway, and Main Garden—also participated. Other students wonder why more New Haven restaurants don't accept Flex Dollars. "I think the businesses should all come to Yale," Hoitt said.

Although the system was supposed to have been ready for student use at the start of the school year, the Yorkside and Yale are still in the process of working out last-minute technical details.

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