As of Oct. 1, the Saint Louis University ID card will expand its influence beyond campus borders.
A new program devised by Barnes and Noble Scholars and SLU Parking and Card Services will allow students to use their Billiken Bucks at nearby restaurants, including Vito’s, Joe Boccardi’s, Santo Bento, Iggy’s Mexican Cantina and the Domino’s on Lindell Boulevard. Plans to include Qdoba, Imo’s on Forest Park Avenue, and Rally’s restaurants on Lindell Boulevard and Chouteau Avenue are in the works.
The program can only be used to purchase school-related items and food, but excludes items such as alcohol and cigarettes. Though the restaurants included in the program serve alcohol, student wishing to purchase some will have to do so with funds other than Billiken Bucks.
“It gives the parents the ability to know that these funds are going to be used for school,” said Parking and Card Services Manager Ann Benson. “Parents are more comfortable [giving] students money that’s going to be used specifically for food.”
Benson also felt that such a program would be far more feasible now that the area around SLU has evolved so much.
“There are a lot of universities that have been doing this years,” she said. “In previous years, we didn’t have anything off of campus except for bars; we were kind of waiting for the environment to catch up.”
Barnes and Noble Scholar Samantha Howard hoped the program might help determine that students support businesses near SLU, in addition to benefiting SLU itself.
“It’s . a really good way for us to ensure the impact that students are having on the area around SLU,” said Howard. “I [also] like the idea that the money is . going back to the University.”
Depending on the restaurant, SLU will receive one to five percent of the profit when SLU students patronize participating restaurants. The money SLU gets back is used to fund a service scholarship and to finance the Billiken Bucks project itself, Benson said.
Though several restaurants have already agreed to participate, and many others are on their way, others have been more hesitant. The Jimmy John’s on Forest Park Avenue was one of the restaurants that chose not to participate in the program, said franchise owner Chris Sedlak.
“We run on a very small profit margin as it is, and in order to pay the price to the school we would have to raise the price of the sandwiches,” he said. “The customers would pay the price for us taking the Billiken Bucks.”
Though Sedlak expressed his interest in participating, he felt that he could not justify SLU’s current asking price.
“We just didn’t think it would be fair to charge that much to the regular customers to meet the cost that the school would require,” he said.
The initiative began approximately a year ago, when the Barnes and Noble Scholars decided to pursue a plan that would let students use their SLU accounts to purchase food from area businesses. They later found that work on a similar project had already begun within the administration and, after a year of planning, the project will officially go into effect on Oct. 1.
Benson eventually hopes to further expand the use of Billiken Bucks in future years to include places like Schnucks, Walgreens and other area stores.
It is important to note that Billiken Bucks are different from the Chartwells Flex-Dollars. Both are accessed through a student’s ID card, but Flex-Dollars are purchased through a meal plan at SLU, and the value of one dollar varies when converted to Flex-Dollars.
Billiken Bucks are an entirely separate account, previously used primarily in the bookstore and library for printing and copying needs. Unlike Flex-Dollars, the value of one dollar is equivalent to one Billiken Buck. Billiken Bucks can be used in Chartwells-owned, on-campus restaurants and new off-campus venues, while Flex-Dollars can only be used at on-campus restaurants.
