INC NEWS - student column asking for lower vendor costs to benefit local businesses; similar column from last semester (Chronicle)

[John Schelp]

"It would be nice if the administration would change
[DukeCard costs], lowering the cost for joining or
subsidizing non-franchise Durham eateries, but the
school makes a lot of money off the merchants program,
and has little economic incentive to alter it."

Pizza Power
by Brian Kindle, Duke Chronicle, 5 Sept 2006

A greasy, mottled slab, about an inch thick. Crust the
density of a hearty kitchen sponge. A few withered
pepperonis trapped in slick elastic cheese, the kind
you can peel off the entire slice intact. The box
claims this is pizza, Domino's pizza to be exact, but
I'm not buying it.

Look, I'll be the first to admit that people from New
York City and New Jersey talk a lot of garbage about
how marvelous their home states are while
simultaneously clawing over each other to escape them,
but when it comes to pizza they tell no lies. The
pizza really is better where they come from. 

Here, in Durham and in North Carolina, pizza is
largely how I've described it in the first paragraph.
It comes in a box marked with the logo of a major
franchise, and it is a sad state of affairs, a
semblance of a pie, to be consumed quickly and
thoughtlessly, usually while doing something else. 

In New York City, pizza is more akin to an affirmation
of the diverse ways in which life is awesome, and
should be celebrated. There your pizza is made by
stern Italian men who treat it like a craft, making
their own sauces, tweaking cheese combinations, even
traveling to Italy periodically to hone their skills.

The living embodiment of New York's commitment to
pizza can be found at Di Fara's in Brooklyn, a pizza
joint I visited while living in New York for the
summer. Like many of the best places, it's
nondescript, short on decor, and looks like nothing's
been added or removed from the walls for at least the
last thirty years. It's owned by the DeMarco family,
and aging patriarch Dom DeMarco handles all the
pizza-making duties personally, from slicing tomatoes
for the sauce (he sometimes makes several batches a
day) to selecting the precise combination of imported
cheeses to finish the pie.

No matter how busy it gets, Dom is the only one
allowed to touch the pies, which means you wait,
usually a very long time. So you hang out, talk to
friends, talk to other people waiting, stare at
archaic photos of a young Dom behind the counter. When
the pizza finally arrives, half the time it's not even
close to what you ordered.

It doesn't matter. You accept it gratefully, and eat
it slowly, with a quiet joy, for Dom is a master and
this is truly quality pizza. Given the excellence of
Di Fara's and other New York institutions, recent
trends in the city's pizza scene are disturbing.

A couple months back the New York Post ran an article
titled "Pizza Wars Heat Up," concerning the gains the
four largest franchises-Papa John's, Pizza Hut,
Domino's and Sbarro--were making in Manhattan. During
the past five years, according to the article, the
number of new chain restaurants on the island
increased by 80 percent, and increasingly franchises
are monopolizing the delivery trade.

This "80 percent increase" amounts to a grand total of
36 chain stores in all of Manhattan. This is a power
struggle, pure and simple, and I fear that once again
places like Di Fara's are going to be the losers.

The major chains emphasize their speed and
convenience. Pizza Hut's advertising is filled with
images of busy, go-getter modern families, grabbing a
slice on the way to karate and soccer practice. Their
website talks about the "rapid pace of modern living"
and "the subsequent demand by consumers for
convenience." When I buy one of their pizzas, it seems
like I'm being liberated from something, like I now
have more time on my hands and more freedom to do what
I want.

But this increased freedom of choice offered by
franchise pizza places is fake. Choosing Domino's and
convenience means I can't choose inconvenience and
quality pizza, even if that's what I actually want. I
might save time by ordering from a chain, but I'll
probably end up wishing I had spent that time waiting
in line at Di Fara's anyway.

What Pizza Hut and the other franchises are selling me
is not only a pizza but a entire lifestyle of ease and
efficiency, one completely at odds with New York's
traditional pizza culture and the ethos of a Di
Fara's. Ideally the two could coexist, but franchises
tend to be very good at what they do, and one of the
things they do is run the local competition out of
business. It isn't anything sinister on the part of
the franchise, but unless you watch the process
closely you'll find your choices have been made for
you, before you even realized what was happening.

Durham is no New York City, but there's a similar
dynamic at work here. Franchise pies from Domino's and
Papa John's rule the market, while local vendors (of
which there are many) struggle for a slice of the
action. What makes the situation even more difficult
for the locals is their lack of access to
undergraduates through the Merchants on Points system.


It's very costly for vendors to become a Merchant on
Points, and while franchises can typically muster up
the capital to be added to the system, many smaller
local ventures simply can't afford it. Durham
mom-and-pops are going up against one hell of a
convenient system, and from the amount of turnaround
in local restaurants, it appears that they're losing.

It would be nice if the administration would change
this, lowering the cost for joining or subsidizing
non-franchise Durham eateries, but the school makes a
lot of money off the merchants program, and has little
economic incentive to alter it. For now, at least,
it's left to the student body. Next time you order a
pie, try something local, something probably made with
a little more concern for quality and a little less
for efficiency. I'm sure Dom DeMarco, if he knew,
would thank you.

****

Town-Gown On Points
by John Schelp and Carol Anderson
Duke Towerview magazine (February 2006)

In the Princeton Review’s 2005 student survey of
college rankings, Duke’s town-gown relations were
fifth worst in the nation. Duke officials may dismiss
them as unscientific, but these ratings raise
questions about how students form such negative
perceptions of town-gown relations and how Duke might
counter them. 

When the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association
investigated poor student attendance at a
Duke-sponsored Block Party on Ninth Street last fall,
it found that changing DukeCard policies could counter
these perceptions. Current DukeCard policies prohibit
students from using the card for purchases off-campus,
discouraging them from patronizing local merchants.
For small, locally owned merchants, the costs
associated with the program ($1,500 to $3,500 start-up
costs and 18% commissions) make participation
prohibitively expensive.

Many other universities have programs that enable
student IDs to function like debit cards by linking
them to area bank accounts. Both UNC-Chapel Hill and
NC State allow students to use their cards off campus.
NCSU charges no commissions. Instead of dragging their
feet, senior administrators like Tallman Trask and
Kemel Dawkins should implement DukeCard policies that
would encourage students to venture off campus,
benefit both the Duke and Durham communities, and
improve perceptions of town-gown relations. 

In a Chronicle article, Duke officials attributed
limiting DukeCard use to on-campus purchases to the
University’s tax-exempt status. But as a local
business owner pointed out in a recent Chronicle
article (1/24/06), there’s a big difference between
the University’s purchases being exempt from sales
taxes and individual DukeCard purchases of pizza or
sandwiches being tax-exempt. Bluntly stated, this
difference is fairness. 

Current DukeCard policies unfairly discourage Duke
students and employees from venturing off campus to
purchase food, textbooks, or other items, depriving
Durham and North Carolina of sales tax revenues and
placing this burden on the backs of local residents
and businesses. Surely this is not the reason we grant
tax-exempt status to institutions of higher learning.
And it may surprise Blue Devil parents that Duke’s
dubious use of its tax-exempt status is compounded by
its 18% bite from every pizza-on-points delivered to
their student’s dorm.	

Lowering DukeCard start-up costs and commissions would
improve town-gown relations, enabling more small,
local businesses — like Blue Corn Café or the
Regulator bookstore on Ninth Street or Morgan Imports
at Brightleaf — to participate in the program. Duke’s
current high set-up fees and 18% commissions are more
easily absorbed by national chains than small, local
merchants. And supporting locally owned merchants is
another important way Duke could help the local
economy and tax base. 

In April 2005, Publisher’s Weekly reported an Austin,
Texas study that found $45 of every $100 spent at an
independent Austin bookseller stayed in the local
community, while just $13 of every $100 spent at the
national chain Borders stayed in the community, making
the independent bookseller’s contribution to the local
economy nearly three times higher than the national
chain’s. It is reasonable to think that what holds for
booksellers also holds for restaurants, music sellers,
and boutiques. 

Thus, both DukeCard holders and Durham will benefit
from thriving local business districts with locally
owned merchants frequented by Duke students and staff
— the former by a wider array of dining, shopping, and
entertainment choices and more contact with the Durham
community and the latter by new customers and
increased tax revenues in the local community. 


Anderson owns Vaguely Reminiscent on Ninth Street;
Schelp is president of the Old West Durham
Neighborhood Association (www.owdna.org), a
Duke-Durham partnership neighborhood.

****