Video by Nick Baker – The BG News

When Lauren Harrison comes to Campus Pollyeyes, she always makes sure to get plenty of stuffed breadsticks.

“It’s all I’ve ever gotten,” Harrison said. “This is where all the people come for the breadsticks.”

Harrison, a Toledo resident, has received both her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Bowling Green State University, and Campus Pollyeyes was a major part of her college career.

“Every time I graduated, I came here to celebrate,” she said.

Harrison is not the only former student drawn back to the breadsticks from another city because many students further away from Toledo order breadsticks.

This is because the restaurant delivers its stuffed breadsticks (complete with dressing and baking instructions) in the mail at no extra charge. As long as it can be mailed overnight, the restaurant will ship anywhere in the country, according to Campus Pollyeyes owner Bob Nicholson.

“We send an enormous amount to Cleveland, Columbus [and] a lot of the graduates here that are still semi-in-Ohio,” Nicholson said.

He said the service started six to seven years ago and increased in popularity during the last couple years. When graduates from the University left town to find new jobs, they still wanted the breadsticks.

“We tried [the mailing service], and it actually picked up pretty well,” Nicholson said. “Basically [it’s] just because people want it so much. They’re addicted to it, so actually it’s helped out tremendously.”

According to Nicholson, the breadsticks are cooked, frozen for 24 hours and wrapped in foil. The dressings are also frozen and packaged separately before the trip to the post office, where the contents of the package need to be shown to the postal worker before they can be sealed and shipped in a guaranteed overnight trip.

Nicholson acknowledges the lack of control the restaurant has once the breadsticks are shipped, and he has had packages arrive to their destinations smashed, leaving the restaurant to refund the customer’s money.

“Here, when I deliver and it’s going from A to B a mile or two down the road, I have control over that,” he said. “It took us a while to perfect our shipping, but granted, if somebody steps on the box or throws it across the room, [there is] nothing I can do about it … that’s the only downfall of mailing them.”

While mailing the breadsticks can be a bit of a hassle (Nicholson said the service is not really advertised), the restaurant continues the service because it is what the customers want and it helps establish a good bond with them.

He speculates the reason so many people want the mailed breadsticks is because many students don’t discover the restaurant until late into their college career, citing someone who researched the restaurant years ago.

“Usually they’re on the meal plans; they don’t like to come off campus,” he said. “By the time you’re a junior and senior, you know about us and then you’re gone.”

Because of this, much of the restaurant’s advertising is focused on dorms such as McDonald to get the underclassmen’s attention.

Nicholson attributes roughly 55 percent of business to BGSU students, establishing a good rapport with in-store patrons and delivery customers alike, with frequent orders from the Enclave and Copper Beech.

Roughly half of the staff is students as well, and Nicholson attributes boosts in business and employees to students bringing their friends and introducing them to the restaurant.

“Word of mouth is, I think, the biggest part of advertising,” he said. “If you get good customer service and take care of your customers, they’ll come back.”

When summer rolls around, the restaurant cuts its hours for June and July because of the staff and business decrease. Come August, applications for jobs increase.

With roughly half its business out of town during the summer, Campus Pollyeyes engages in advertising around the various summer camps, including swim meets and soccer tournaments hosted on the campus.

It is also helpful when graduates like Harrison bring in coworkers to try out the food.

Harrison considers the restaurant to be “extremely” valuable to the campus experience and the students to be just as valuable to contributing to the atmosphere of the business.

“I’ve had a lot of late nights here,” she said.