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Fast food restaurant Wendy’s, is set to open a location in late November within the Sorensen Student Center after a decade of contract negotiations.
Funded partially by UVU’s financial team, the construction of Wendy’s is set to take 10 weeks. The majority of the costs will be paid for by the franchise owner, Herb Humphrey. However, to ensure the space is ready to be occupied, UVU’s financial team will pay about $5000.
“The $5000 is really a novel amount compared to the $200,000 to $250,000 needed to build that space out, plus the $400,000 to $500,000 in equipment, this will be paid for by the franchise owner,” said Jacob Atkin, associate vice president of Finance for UVU.
The $5000 funding that will go into preparing the space comes from residual revenue, which is revenue that the auxiliaries, such as dining services and the bookstore, earn.
The deal with Wendy’s has been a decade long process.
“We’ve been trying for a decade to get Wendy’s in there,” said Humphrey. “And we finally have a location that Wendy’s International would approve us to do, so we’re excited about being here at the university. We sponsored the UVU athletics for about 11 years, so we’ve been franchisees there. We just believe it’s a good partnership to be in here at UVU.”
“I am excited for the Wendy’s,” said Jacob Smith, a business marketing major. “I think it will be great because it is a cheaper option, and a great business idea because we love fast food and it’s cheap.”
“We have a number of locations that provide vegetarian and vegan options, and so we decided that we needed a hamburger joint, that that was our biggest deficiency,” said Atkin. “Students were letting us know what they wanted most, so we considered a number of burger options and settled on Wendy’s for a number of reasons. One being price point — our students are very sensitive to price — and second, Wendy’s gives us another low price option on campus between their dollar menu and $4 option, and with an addition of Taco Bell, students can now eat for something less than $5.”
Atkin also said that all current funding is going towards Wendy’s. In the future however, he plans to add more eateries around campus.
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