Ronj Offers Business-minded Students a Free Pass

Passed on from year to year, each set of managers brings their own uniqueness to the Ronj, or the Ronj at Ross House as it is officially named. Established in 1997, the Ronj caters to the Bates evening crowd, selling chai, coffee and an assortment of candy and chocolate.
    This year’s leadership includes Naomi Dimon ’09, Emma Halas-O’Connor ’09 as well as Andrew Karp ’11 and Lindsay Swan ’11.
The Bates website and Dean Tannenbaum both attribute the Ronj’s moniker to its pastoral colored walls. The student café transitioned from L’orange, the French word for orange, to the shorter Ronj; though there are rumors that it may be named after Ron Jeremy, a famed porn star.
     “Oh my god what is the deal with that,” said Dimon, one of the managers. “That’s always been going around a little bit…. I find that so funny because it’s not in the spirit of the Ronj at all, so it’s just like yeah sure that’s funny, but, you know, it’s the Ronj.”
    The Ronj offers students with an entrepreneurial spirit the opportunity to try their hand at business, though they are given liberties that few other entrepreneurs enjoy: they don’t have to make a profit.
    The café on Fyre Street is supported by the Student Activities Committee under the auspices of Dean Tannenbaum, whose first year at Bates coincided with the Ronj’s opening. 
    “It is not a self-sufficient business,” Tannenbaum said. “It never had any true intention of being self-sufficient. Our hope was that they would be able to reach a certain target revenue annually and that would help in defraying both their operating costs and their programming costs. But ultimately the amount spent on student wages and purchasing of equipment and supplies exceeds the amount of revenue that the place generates.”
    Last year’s budget was $45,500 with $25,000 allotted for student wages and $20,500 for supplies, such as magazine subscriptions, coffee, milk, candy, et cetera.
    “Technically speaking their total budget is $33,500 because their target [revenue] is $12,000 and that hasn’t changed in a couple of years,” said Tannenbaum.
    “I haven’t checked in with them since mid-semester,” said Dimon, “but at that point they said we were very much on track and definitely ahead of last year in terms of reaching that. So there’s been no slow down since then, so I would assume we’ve either reached it or are very close so that’s great ’cause it’s not even counting short term.”
    This year the Ronj has branched out to host various events such as Poor Poet’s Night, the Love Guru and Valentine’s Day card making.
    “Both Karp and Lindsay have taken real initiative with filling some big shoes in terms of jumping, in and being in charge of all the events cause Emma and I are really staffing, stocking, money and running all the real workings of the Ronj,” said Dimon. “But in terms of events, it’s really just been Karp and Lindsay, with us doing whatever they ask to help…. They’re feeling the pulse of what people want and following through.”
    In addition to the standard stock of candy and chocolates, this year’s managers have added multiple varieties of health food bars as well as soups, such as Easy Mac and Cup of Noodles, to the inventory.
    “That’s actually, I think, brought a lot more sales rather than from the chai…. Now you can actually have a legit snack instead of, ‘oh wow I don’t feel like a Butterfinger.’ I think that’s been a really good move because people stop here after sports practice and have an Easy Mac,” said Dimon.
Regarding recommendations for next year, Dimon suggests “refocus[ing] the aim to just get the whole range, the whole spectrum of people to come, and that has to do with how we start out the year with hiring as well as events.”
    But Dimon was tight-lipped about next year’s managers.  “I’m not at liberty to say, but you can except Lindsay and Karp plus one, but all I can say is that it’s going to be a dynamic trio – a lot of creativity.”
    The Ronj has made a lot of progress since the start of the year when the front door was kicked down and a fire extinguisher set loose in the front room.
    “[It] was so sad, but everyone really rallied together to redecorate and it was really exciting,” said Dimon.
 

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