Inside Café East: Unique flavors, a mysterious Instagram, and commitment

Upper West Side NY

29 December, 2021

4:12 PM

Description

Columbia Daily Spectator BY ARIANA EFTIMIU • DECEMBER 28, 2021, 5:52 PM Lerner Hall—a campus hot spot, perennially filled with delicate piano music and bustling laughter—is home to Ferris Booth Commons' baked goods, a maze of classrooms, and the sometimes overlooked Café East. Nestled on the second floor's far left corner, Café East serves Taiwanese tea drinks, milky tapioca beverages, fresh fruit cups, and an unmatched assortment of sushi. The café is open Sunday through Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Café East became an established eatery on Columbia's campus in 2003 and once had a home in the Business School's Uris Hall. The move to Lerner has increased business, although fewer graduate students frequent the café. With students' full return to campus after a tumultuous almost two years, the café has seen an incredible increase in popularity, perhaps in part due to a new Instagram account, created in October 2021, under the name @cafe_east_columbia. The pandemic negatively impacted the size of the café's customer base, and Café East manager Milton Mao stated that reduced seating due to COVID-19 restrictions caused the café to lose visitors. However, the café has been back in full swing this semester, with its popularity continuously increasing. "We lost revenue; we lost patron count," Mao said. "We also had a lot of international students, especially from Asia, [who] loved coming here, and we felt a dramatic decline in that number [of visitors]." Sungjoon Park, CC '25, from Seoul, South Korea, is one of many Café East superfans. He stated, "I'm just a huge fan of boba. I used to cook my own boba tea. … I was just inclined to find good boba around campus because I wasn't satisfied with the options off campus. So I found Café East, and I've been satisfied so far." With students back on campus, business has been looking up. Speaking about how often he visits the café, Park noted, "It's been a very committed relationship so far." Miriam Saidi, BC '25, echoed the sentiment, saying, "It's just been love at first sight." Students like Park and Saidi have been loyal customers, consistently choosing Café East over on- and off-campus competitors. Saidi alluded to the freshness of the ingredients, and to the uniqueness of the café's offerings. Mao continuously emphasized his commitment to only the finest ingredients and ensuring staff are genuine and positive. "[In our fruit cups], we stuck with mangoes for many years as they were very popular," he said. "Our smoothies are very popular as well. We don't use any frozen fruits; we try to stick with fresh fruits, regardless of the price." Fruit is not the only thing at Café East that Mao ensures is of top quality, and Park agreed that Café East's food and bubble tea was one of a kind. In addition to Café East, options for bubble tea near campus include Gong Cha, Tea Magic, and Culture Tea Bar. Kung Fu Tea, another popular bubble tea chain, was previously located around Columbia and closed in September. Despite the many bubble tea options near Café East, the eatery is no stranger to crowds. Saidi believes word of mouth, along with its new Instagram presence, has contributed to increased traffic at the café. "[Cafe East] shows up [on my feed]—I don't follow them, and they show up on my Instagram aggressively advertising," she said. These ads, along with curiosity about who runs the café's Instagram account, brought Saidi and other students to the café in the first place. "It's a mystery to me. Does Columbia pay for this? I have so many questions about it," Saidi said. "Because somehow it's different. There's something about it that's different. Like, is it student-run? … It doesn't make sense to me." The faces behind the Instagram account belong to co-moderators Julia Cobb, CC '21, and Kiki Gonglewski, CC '23. "Last year on campus [during the pandemic] was very difficult…you couldn't do anything," Cobb said. "Once I got to campus and I saw that Café East was closed, I was just so distressed and upset. This year, seeing Café East was open, I almost started crying." Cobb worked several marketing internships while at Columbia, which prompted her to ask the employees and management at Café East if they had any sort of social media presence. Workers at the Café connected her to Mao, who was searching for a social media manager to help advertise. Cobb then hired Gonglewski as her co-intern. Instagram became their main platform due to her concerns about TikTok's reliability and the lack of Facebook presence of college students. Gonglewski has experience curating videos and highlight reels. She occasionally brings an elaborate set-up to create content for the Café East Instagram account, including her camera, lens kits, and a green screen. The two moderators met through the Columbia Film Society, Delta Kappa Alpha. The general vibe of the Instagram account can be described as, according to Cobb, "quirky, a little sassy and snarky, hopefully very cheerful … silly, [and] creative." The posts themselves are often in a "Facebook meme template," a style adorned with cute emoticons and whatever the curators believe might speak to their viewers. Cobb and Gonglewsky aim to speak to the student body, commenting that it helps "[being] part of the audience to cater to the audience." The mystery surrounding the Café East instagram account was not intentional. The coincidental increase in popularity of the eatery surrounding the mystery of the account owners is nevertheless an added benefit. "We weren't intending to hide ourselves as [the owners]. … We posted pictures where we were in them, but we also posted pictures of our friends [and others]. … So I guess the true founders got lost in the sauce," Gonglewski said. Cobb shared the same sentiment, finding it amusing and surprising that their identities had become such a topic of conversation among the Columbia community. "We weren't trying to make it some sort of mystery… but I'm glad that people have shown positive feedback for [our posts]," noting that their goal is to help the café gain publicity, so press is good. The owners, nevertheless, added to the mystery once Columbia students started wondering about the account owners' identity. One student commented, "cafe east reveal yourself," on a post, and another responded with the comment "face reveal the masses wanna know." Cobb and Gonglewsky entertained this discourse and posted a screenshot of these comments with part of the caption reading, "200 likes and we'll do a face reveal?" The press has paid off. For those that have yet to visit Café East, Saidi recommends it because it is cheaper than the chains around campus, and Park mentioned that students can use Columbia dining dollars. Cobb and Gonglewski rave about the hojicha, dark-roasted matcha imported from Japan with added homemade vanilla syrup. Park asks for frozen yogurt with tapioca pearls, somewhat of a "hidden menu" order, which he said makes him very happy. Part of Mao's long-standing philosophy has been that if you are nice to a customer, they will be a customer for the next four years, and it seems to have been a successful one. "Just as an artist, I feel an obligation philosophically to support another artist who's doing things that I really find valuable. … [Mao] is an artist; he's a chef, and I love to support his work." Cobb said. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.