Student baristas manage own coffee shop

A well-kept secret, the Cheshire Café is nestled in a quiet corner of the Edmondson building of the Collins Living-Learning Center. At 8 p.m. each night, student baristas open the doors of the café, fondly referred to as “the Chesh” by regular patrons.

Once a week, inside the low-lit “Alice in Wonderland”-themed room crammed with purple chairs and decoupage tables, junior Sabra Tolliver works behind the counter. Though Tolliver said she is happy to make coffee for the customers, she doesn’t drink it herself.

“I’m LDS,” Tolliver said, referencing her Latter-day Saints affiliation. “So I don’t drink coffee or really most teas. That was kind of interesting, being hired and not being able to drink most of the menu. So people will come in and be like, ‘Oh, is this mocha good?’ I’m like, ‘Well the rest of the customers really like it.’”

Tolliver has been a barista at the Chesh since the beginning of the school year.

“The first couple of weeks, we were freakishly busy,” Tolliver said. “It was really trial-by-fire. We had so many people. Despite not being able to walk when I left because I was on my feet and I hadn’t worn proper shoes, it was a lot of fun.”

Tolliver said she enjoys interacting with the people she serves at the Chesh.

“I love meeting people,” Tolliver said. “I’m a huge people person. Some of my favorite people to meet are the parents of the kids that come in.”

When parents of Collins residents enter the shop, they are most impressed by the reasonable, cash-only prices of the drinks and the variety of syrup flavors offered, Tolliver said.

“We have a lot of syrups,” Tolliver said. “I think we’re one of the few coffee shops in Indiana, possibly even the country, that has this many flavor options.”

As a barista, Tolliver is responsible for planning a couple of programs each month and creating some of the specialty boards changed each week.

“They say try to have about six drinks on them. Those are really are only guidelines,” Tolliver said. “Six drinks, don’t have too much of one thing. I’ve done three boards. I’ve done an ‘Avengers’ board at the beginning of the year, a ‘villains’ board and a ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ board.”

The Chesh began in the ’90s as a Collins resident’s Q-project, the culminating project of the Q199: Residential Learning Workshop class all Collins incoming freshmen are required to take. It began in a closet in the coffeehouse outside of the Chesh’s current location. Now, there is room for games and coloring book pages to keep customers busy as well.

“It’s a great space,” Lindsay Bugher, assistant director for Collins LLC, said. “Aside from just having a place for students to go, it provides the students who work there a good opportunity to develop skills in management and leadership.”

Former Collins resident and senior Cassandra Cody frequents the Chesh three to four times a week, even though she now lives off-campus.

“It gives everyone a better place to hang out than just in lounges,” Cody said. “It’s active. There are games and always people. It’s more of a community than just ‘oh, let’s go sit in the lounge’ or ‘let’s sit on our floor with our door open.’”

For Cody, baristas such as Tolliver make visiting the Chesh a pleasant experience.

“They always seem to pick people that are already really active in Collins (to be the baristas),” Cody said. “This is their home, this is their community. So they make sure that everyone’s enjoying themselves, everyone’s having a good time.”