For numerous St. Olaf students, the opening of The Cave — also known as the C-Store — was a welcome addition to the limited options to get food on campus. Located next to the Lion’s Pause, the C-Store serves as the campus convenience store and is home to various snacks, drinks, and pre-made meals. However, the store has sat almost entirely empty since the beginning of spring semester.

“The C-Store looks really sad right now,” Mary Staplin ’26, who is an Admission Fellow for St. Olaf, said in an email interview with The Olaf Messenger. “I don’t want to bring prospective students into the Pause anymore when I’m giving tours because it is embarrassingly empty.”

The lack of restocks in the C-Store has left many students frustrated, notably on the social media platform Fizz, with some questioning why the store has been left barren for so long.

The answer: theft.

In an interview with The Olaf Messenger, Assistant Vice President for Budget and Auxiliary Operations Angela Mathews said that the C-Store started losing a significant amount of revenue around Thanksgiving. That trend has only continued into the spring.

“Right now, we’re losing, on average, $1,200 a week since the beginning of spring semester,” Mathews said. “[Bon Appétit] has also told us that it’s higher than what other colleges of our size experience.”

As a result of the loss and complaints from students, the Finance Office is working with Bon Appétit, Public Safety, and Student Life to mitigate the theft issue.

“We know that the students who are taking the majority of the products are a small group of individuals — we don’t want that to impact the whole student body,” Mathews said. “We are committed to trying to make The Cave work, to provide access to all students.”

Potential solutions include limiting the hours that the C-Store is open, paying to staff the store, and reviewing camera footage to determine which students may be frequently stealing.

“I think that having staff or student workers there would improve it greatly,” Violet Ecklund-Johnson ’26 said in an email interview with The Olaf Messenger. “Often, the register won’t work, which is frustrating, and there’s no one to ask [about it]. It feels very unsupervised in general.”

It is unclear when the C-Store will be restocked again, but students have expressed a desire for it to happen soon.

“I hope that a solution will be figured out,” Staplin said. “It would be sad if they took out the Lair and renovated the whole space just to not have it be usable.”