Overview: Survey of Library Cafes
The study presents data from a survey of more than 40 academic and public libraries. The libraries provide data about their library cafes and other food service operations, such as vending machines. The report has more than 100 tables of data exploring a broad range of issues related to library cafes, such as their finances, impact on patron traffic, staffing and maintenance. Data is broken out for academic and public libraries, and by size of library, for easier benchmarking.
Some of the findings of the report are that:
- Snacks account for nearly 71% of the income of library cafes, though lunch adds a not at all negligible 20.83% of total revenue and breakfast chips in with another 8.33%, according to The Survey of Library Cafes.
- Salads in this era of health consciousness chipped in only a mean of 4.5% of sales, more in the public than college libraries. All salad sales came from the larger libraries, those with more than 600,000 annual patrons.
- The average price of a cup of coffee in the library cafes was $1.49, perhaps reflecting the Starbuck-ization of the library café. This figure also takes into account those libraries that gave their coffee away.
- More than 40% of the library cafes offered outdoor eating. Close to 65% of the libraries in the sample had vending machines, with an average of only about three vending machines per library.
See: Mean, Median, Minimum and Maximum – Survey of Library Cafes (PDF; 26 KB)
Full report available for purchase.
Source: Research and Markets
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