COULSON RETIRES,
SCHLUEP MOVES UP

If you want to say goodbye to Sharon Coulson, you'll need to stop by the Coffee House by the close of business next Thursday (June 28).

The next day, Darin Schluep takes her place, moving up from food service manager. Officially, he is the interim director of ASUCD Dining Services, said Brett Burns, ASUCD business manager.

Schluep started working in the CoHo kitchen as an undergraduate, and rose through the ranks to supervisor, student manager and interim kitchen manager — all this while he was still a student, albeit, according to Burns, “a very part-time student at that point.”

He was formally hired as kitchen manager in 2000 and moved to front-of-house manager in 2009. He was instrumental in the development and completion of the 2009-10 renovation, and the development of the CoHo South Café in the Student Community Center.

Oh, and he earned his degree (a Bachelor of Arts in English) in 2006.

COHO COOKBOOK

A reprint of the 1986 edition is available through UC Davis Stores.

We call it the Coffee House, but Sharon Coulson made it a home.

Next Thursday (June 28) she retires after nearly 30 years as the director, proud that she kept the essence of the Coffee House as a home away from home for student employees and a place where the coffee is always on and the home-style meals always hit the spot.

She signed on in 1983, after working as food service manager at the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento for four years. She recalled how Dean Gordon Schaber tried to talk her out of leaving, asking her, “Why would you want to go work at that two-bit hot dog stand?”

The ASUCD Coffee House was a bit Bohemian at the time, Coulson recalled. But two-bit? Hardly.

Back then, the Coffee House was bringing in $800,000 in business. Today, the 45-year-old CoHo serves 7,000 customers a day in the fall, winter and spring quarters — doing about $4 million in business annually.

“Sharon Coulson revolutionized the way retail food service is provided in a university setting,” said Brett Burns, the ASUCD business manager who formerly served as the director of Memorial Union Auxiliary Services. “The student-directed, from-scratch cooking is the model for food service delivery and iconic to the UC Davis experience.

From $1 subs to sushi

“Sharon will be greatly missed on campus,” Burns added. “However, her legacy of healthy, affordable food options will live on in ASUCD Dining Services for future Aggies.”

Asked for the secret to her success, Coulson responded: “I treated the Coffee House as if it were my own business.” Often that meant working late (and staying overnight in a Davis hotel, instead of driving home to Sacramento). It meant working in unconventional ways, with a portable kitchen and other temporary facilities, to keep the campus fed during the CoHo’s yearlong renovation, 2009-10.

The CoHo reopened in October 2010 with a new layout, a new coffee bar, a new sushi bar, and a new, modern look — a far cry from the original Coffee House founded in 1967 in the old East Hall (where Dutton Hall stands today).

By the time Coulson came on board, the Coffee House had moved to the Memorial Union, the east side. She recalled a menu of $1 subs and a few salads, and a different stir-fry entrée every day.

Then, in 1990, the Coffee House moved to the Memorial Union’s west side. “We ended up with all this space, and we had to fill the hot wells (in the serving counter) with something,” Coulson said.

“I dug deep into my recipe books,” she recalled. And then she enlarged those recipes. (She went large in a different way recently when she turned her mom's chili stack into the Quad Stack.)

Student employees brought in their own recipes to add to the CoHo's home-style flavor — casseroles and pasta sauces, favorite cookies and more soups, all from scratch. (But nothing deep-fried, not even french fries, student employee Austin Smith said, noting Coulson is "all about health.")

“People have an emotional connection to this place,” Coulson said, “to the CoHo itself and to the food.”

To dishes like chicken tetrazzini — an “icon,” Coulson said — and Hungarian goulash beef. Or, in CoHo slang, chicken tet and hung beef.

CoHo music through the years

In all her time at the CoHo, from the MU’s east side to the west side, and through the big renovation, what’s changed the most? “Interestingly, the music,” Coulson said. And the music players — from cassette tape to CD to MP3 — blaring from the kitchen and the counters, loudly declaring: Students work here!

“Actually, the music is not even that different. Except the ’80s had bad music!”

The student employees, of course, are in charge of the music. This is typical of Coulson’s management style: “I always tried to see things as if I were a student employee. Recognizing, of course, that I am a manager, I strove for a balance between being a businesswoman and preserving the essence of the Coffee House experience.”

For the employees — nearly 250 every year — the experience is twofold, she said.

First, students learn about the food service industry, from cashier to preparing food from scratch to customer service.

Secondly, the CoHo is a home away from home, where students work side by side, sit down for meals together and build friendships. “We’ve had several employees meet here and get married,” Coulson said.

“There’s a visceral connection, I’ve seen it, a visceral connection to the Coffee House. Some of my former employees say this was the best time of their life. It’s incredible. It makes me feel great.”

Lauren Woods worked at the Coffee House for four years, through her graduation in 2010, then returned to the CoHo as a career employee in 2011. "Sharon created an environment that's so unique," Woods said. "It feels more like a family than a work environment."

"And she's pretty cool!"

Smith has worked in the CoHo kitchen in all of his four years here, the last two as a student manager. He graduated this month with a degree in wildlife, fish and conservation biology, and he's still in the CoHo kitchen this summer.

"It's a great social network," he said. "All my friends are here, it's like a fraternity or a sorority."

The employees agreed Coulson is a good boss and a good businesswoman — Smith called her "very wise," while Woods said Coulson is quick at coming up with solutions to whatever problems may arise.

Gimme that home cooking

Coulson grew up in Placerville and attended California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, graduating in 1977 with a degree in dietetics and food administration. “I didn’t want to work in a hospital,” she said, explaining how she ended up at McGeorge and then UC Davis.

She met her husband through UC Davis, not in the CoHo, and not even on the campus, really. It was on an Outdoor Adventures trip in 1999: Coulson and Ted Abresch, another UC Davis employee, shared guide duties on an ocean-kayaking adventure off Baja California.

Now Coulson and Abresch, a staff research associate in the field of neuromuscular diseases, are retiring on the same day. He has an edge on his wife in UC Davis seniority: 36 years.

Abresch received a master’s degree in water science and engineering at UC Davis, but he spent his entire career here in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in the School of Medicine, working his way up to research and training director.

They are moving soon to Rancho Bernardo (in the hills of San Diego County), to a home they bought five years ago. Upon making the purchase, they set a goal of moving into the house in five years — and they are sticking to it. Coulson speaks of days bike riding, surfing, hiking, swimming and playing tennis.

And cooking. Maybe some chicken tet every now and then, to remind her and her husband of home.

Reach Dateline UC Davis Editor Dave Jones at (530) 752-6556 or dljones@ucdavis.edu.

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