Sandwich shop Ike’s Place might finally return to campus: Stanford’s Financial Management Services department is currently accepting proposals from vendors to fill an unoccupied area in the McMurtry Building.
Ike Shehadeh, owner of the Ike’s sandwich franchise, said he received and accepted a Request for Proposal letter several weeks ago and plans to submit a proposal detailing his bid and plans for the space.
According to Shehadeh, the deadline for submitting a proposal is Jan. 29, after which the next step in the process would likely be two rounds of interviews.
Shehadeh and six to eight other vendors were given a walk-through of the prospective first floor location. Shehadeh described the location as being of adequate size, though smaller than the restaurant previously operated by Ike’s Place in the Huang Engineering Center from 2010 until 2014, when the business’s contract ended and it lost a bid to continue operating in the Engineering Quad.
In addition to the smaller size, one inconvenient setback to the McMurtry location is the lack of ventilation and the limited capacity for preparation, since cooking is not possible in the space.
“It could make things tricky for people. It definitely makes things trickier for me for sure,” Shedadeh said.
Since the restaurant chain left campus, Ike’s has made several bids to return, including one for a space in the Lathrop Library.
Nevertheless, Ike’s popularity among students makes it a strong candidate for the McMurtry space. When Ike’s Place was replaced in 2014, students created “Ike’s Army,” an organization which led a protest against the university’s decision to replace the restaurant with Forbes Family Cafe, run by Residential and Dining Enterprises.
“Ike’s was fairly popular when it was [on campus] so it has a good chance for winning the bid,” said Evelyna Wang ’16, who signed the student created petition to save Ike’s place.
Despite some complaints about the price and wait time for Ike’s Place, Wang remembers the sandwiches as “well worth the price and satisfaction.”
Contact Sandra Ortellado at sortella ‘at’ stanford.edu.