The Maverick Snack Shop, located in the Bronson Arena lobby, is one of the few on-campus not operated and staffed by Sodexo. Sodexo is the food service company that runs the dining hall and many of the other food outlets on campus, such as Rowdy’s and the coffee shop in Houston Hall.

According to Dana Nunn, director of media relations, Sodexo does not have exclusive rights to food in the Maverick Center.

Josh Munk, assistant athletic director, and event manager, explained that Sodexo was offered rights to run the concession stand, the previous incarnation of the snack shop, approximately four or five years ago. Sodexo turned down this opportunity because it was not lucrative for them to take over. Sodexo has much higher upfront costs than the athletic department does since they must go through Cisco for all their food products. The athletic department, however, can purchase from whomever they choose.

When the Maverick Snack Shop was proposed, Sodexo was offered another chance to provide food. The university and Sodexo, however, felt this option didn’t make sense, as Munk explained.

“If athletics currently runs concessions now, it would be a very bad set-up, too, in the over-lap between Sodexo running the snack shop during the day and concessions moving in at night and being run by athletics, so it just made more sense for it, at least in the start, to just have it under the athletics umbrella and see where we’re at in a year,” Munk said.

The athletic department did have some work to do to transform a concession stand into a snack shop, a process which involved much more than simply a new space.

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Since the food for a concession stand and the food for a snack shop would be different, Munk said the athletic department did some research to ensure that they would provide what students, faculty and staff at CMU wanted. As the Maverick Snack Shop is the only close on-campus food option for students in the new health sciences building or kinesiology department, these departments were focused on the most when asking questions.

“The biggest key starting the snack shop was not knowing exactly what people would want, so we actually want to several of the folks who work on the north side of campus, talked to some of the students over there a little,” Munk said.

Currently, the Maverick Snack Shop provides breakfast and lunch options from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. The food for these meals and snacks comes from a variety of suppliers. Munk said that most of the food is bought in bulk from Sam’s Club, as well as the sandwiches and wraps, which Sam’s Club makes fresh three times weekly for the shop.

The coffee is provided by Colorado Legacy Coffee, a corporation which supplies many of the downtown coffee shops, as well as the nearby Four Winds Coffee Shop. The muffins, available for breakfast, are provided by My Favorite Muffin, a company which became an athletic department sponsor last year. Munk was excited for another opportunity to partner with the company, who also delivers muffins to the nearby 7th Street Deli.

Though business has been slightly increasing day by day, Munk said the athletic department will work to advertise the Maverick Snack Shop on social media, during games as a promotion and through email to all students, faculty and staff.