It’s hard not to notice the influx of students at the end of every August as University of Texas at Austin prepares for its fall semester. The businesses surrounding UT’s campus were certainly at attention as more than 7,000 freshman arrived on campus and more than 50,000 students began classes last week.
The University of Texas estimates its students provide an annual economic boost of $823 million to the local economy, according to a report the school published in January 2010. For businesses in the University of Texas area, these students are their bread and butter. Stores say they see a drop when the students are gone over the summer and, sure enough, a spike when they return for move-in the last weekend in August.
Wheatsville Co-Op (3101 Guadalupe), the UT-area grocery store co-op, sees a 16 percent decline in business when students are gone, store officials say, adding that while the store continued to see increases in business this summer over previous years, it was at a much slower pace than during the school year.
“Wheatsville is absolutely affected by the UT tides,” says Raquel Dadomo, the co-op's brand manager. “We get a lot of UT faculty and staff shopping with us when school is in session, but it definitely drifts when school is closed for any length of time. Even [move-in] weekend, we saw a steep spike in sales and the customer count went up dramatically.”
The weekend of Aug. 24 to Aug. 26, called “Mooov-In” by UT officials, saw 7,500 students take up residency for the school year in on-campus housing. It wasn’t only Wheatsville that felt the crush of this new business. The Kerbey Lane Café UT location (2606 Guadalupe St.) had lines out the door.
“Business is definitely slower during the summer, but [the Aug. 24-26] weekend was record-breaking sales with dorm move-in,” says Karli Isiyel, marketing coordinator for Kerbey Lane Café, adding that she estimates that more than 50 percent of the UT location’s customer base is composed of students.
Business picks up in August for Toy Joy (2900 Guadalupe St.) as well. Adam Protextor, a manager there, notes that although back-to-school items for all ages are sold in August, about a third of the store’s customers are UT students.
August is the second best sales month of the year for Breed & Co. (718 W. 29th St.), with only Santa-related sales being able to trump student-related ones, according to owner Truman Breed.
“We sell a lot of lock sets, keys, shelving materials for apartments and dorms,” he says. “All month long, the apartment maintenance guys are coming in, fixing the apartments up, patching holes in the walls and that sort of thing.”
The boom in business is all just part of the annual cycle for UT-area shops.
“We have been documenting our numbers long enough to know that it is not coincidental. We are really happy that school is back in session,” Wheatsville's Dadomo says. “Now if we could just get them to teach a course about the co-op business model, we’d be ecstatic!”