The Lawrentian

Issue date: 11/13/09 Section: Features

Media Credit: minh nguyen Harmony Café hopes to become more involved with Lawrence University.

"In Pursuit of Innovation" is a pretty awesome class. During our first two weeks Professors Adam Galambos and John Brandenberger asked students to think of things they wished already existed. This was the easy part. One of our classmates suggested an eBay-type service for Lawrence students, while another brought up the idea of a remote control keg. When we were asked to break into groups and actually get these ideas off the ground, we were excited. EBay for Lawrence was going to become a reality! The remote controlled keg, on the other hand, did not make the cut.
Our professors told us that one of the groups in our class would have the opportunity to work with Harmony Café. Last year, a team of LU students from this class did market research on Harmony Café; and suggested making the move from behind the City Center to be closer to College Ave and the LU campus. Harmony Café recently shifted to 223 E. College Ave. and we were told that sales had tripled since. For this reason Harmony was excited to be able to work with Lawrence students again.
"I love coffee," I thought to myself, and volunteered to be a part of the group that works with Harmony Café. Murtaza Amiryar, Sunghun Cho, Eric Murray and I would spend the majority of fall term at Harmony Café. We met with Tara, director of the café, to find out what aspects of the business they wanted us to work our innovational magic on. Tara told us that the mission of Harmony Café as a non-profit entity was to provide diverse groups with a meeting place. Since there were so many students at Lawrence who hail from different ethnic backgrounds and numerous student groups who are involved around campus, Tara had hoped to turn Harmony Café; into an ideal place for these groups of students to meet.
After weeks of brainstorming and planning, our hard work is about to pay off. This Sunday, Nov. 15, Harmony Café is sponsoring two back-to-back events for Lawrence students during finals week. If you are one of the lucky students with time to kill while your friends are busy studying for exams, come over to Harmony from 6 to 8 p.m. for the musical event "Feel Free at Harmony." Harmony Café will be introducing two new menu items whose naming was influenced by Lawrence University: the Beta Burger and SigEp shake. While enjoying your burger and shake, Lawrence musicians will be doing live performances which will be followed by a poetry reading from Associate Professor Faith Barrett's poetry class.
Harmony Café will be closing its doors to the public after the "Feel Free at Harmony" event. Entrance after 8 p.m. is limited to Lawrence students for a "finals study" event. The café will be open until 1 a.m. and there will be deals on food and coffee all night long. Based on how many people come to this first student event, Harmony will consider holding more of these gatherings throughout the year or even at their other location in Green Bay.

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