BLOOMINGTON — The Read Eatery will close March 15, making way for construction of a Starbucks and Poke by Sushi King.
Both restaurants are set to be complete by the fall semester, according to IU Dining’s website.
Natalie Graves, a student at the IU Jacobs School of Music, said the absence of the eatery means she will have to make an extra trip for lunch.
“All my classes are right here, so it doesn’t really make sense for me to be running to Forest just to run back to these buildings,” she said. “I just don’t have the time, honestly, either, to go sit down and eat and then go to class. I’m literally running to class with my sandwich in my hand most of the time."
The Starbucks will be the third on IU’s campus, joining the coffee chain’s existing locations at McNutt Quad and the Indiana Memorial Union.
For Elliot Loewy, gone are the days of “free” coffee.
"I think it’s kind of stupid, because there’s free coffee here, and now we’re gonna have to use dining dollars or whatever for the Starbucks I guess they’re gonna put there,” he said.
The new Poke by Sushi King, a poke bowl restaurant, will be campus’ second, following the first one built in 2023 at Hodge Hall’s Campus Café.
This is not the only change coming to IU Dining, as the dining hall inside Wright Quad will reopen after the quad’s $51 million renovation wraps up in the fall.
As a result, Wells Library’s Bookmarket Eatery will transition to a food court similar to the format inside the IMU. The eatery was built in 2023 as a substitute for Wright Quad’s dining hall during its renovations.
IU announced in Nov. 2024 it would increase housing and dining rates on the Bloomington campus by 2% each.
