By: Samantha Bortniker
Between December 21 and January 22, walking down Route 1 will be like walking through a ghost town. With a month-long winter break coming up and students vacating the campus, businesses along the road –from restaurants to bars to beauty salons—will soon feel the emptiness of College Park.
“A majority of business is college students,” says Bagel Place employee Tziporah Kay. Kay says business is a lot slower during the winter and summer breaks and the store loses a lot of money when school isn’t in session.
Popular eatery Chipotle also depends on students for most of its sales, says Ana Valdia, who has worked at the restaurant for four years. So the student exodus with each school break hurts business.
A large portion of the community living near Route 1’s shops will temporarily leave town in a month. Although South Campus residents can request to stay during the winter break, North Campus residents are required to move out. And many students in surrounding apartments use at least part of their breaks to spend more time with family –away from College Park.
Julie Nguyen, a 10-year employee at Kevin Nails, says that breaks mean slower business for everybody.
Nguyen says that when students go away for vacation, her business mostly relies on the salon’s regular customers.
Bagel Place relies on peaks during the year, such as Saturdays and Sundays, Family Weekend and the week before school starts when students have more free time, says Kay, who has worked at the store for a year and a half.
There’s also a kind of balance that happens during school breaks.
“It helps that half of the employees live out of state, because we don’t need as many workers,” Kay says.
So although Kevin Nails, Bagel Place, Chipotle and other Route 1 shops rely on college students for a lot of their business, they’ve learned to deal with the university’s breaks –and the loss of thousands of potential customers when students head home.
