Located just a few minutes from campus, Stony's Restaurant offers not only an inexpensive alternative to cafeteria food, but also works closely with University clubs and organizations.
Kelsey Coolidge, a senior diplomacy major and chair of Village Liaisons, said Stony's is great about representing Seton Hall in their business.
"We worked with them when they first opened and helped set up their Wednesday night deal for students," Coolidge said. "They've gone out of their way to put up Seton Hall décor around the restaurant and show SHU basketball games on their TVs."
According to Stony's owner, Stony Johnson, he received some of the marketing ideas for his restaurant from a group of marketing students at Seton Hall.
Johnson said some of the students suggested bringing in televisions to watch sports games on, which brought in business.
"One of the students thought it would be a good idea to create a Facebook page, which we did," Johnson said. "We now have about 600 likes on the page."
Johnson also said the Wednesday night deal for Seton Hall students has tripled business on Wednesdays.
"Seton Hall students bring in a lot of excitement and new ideas," Johnson said. "We started accepting Pirates Gold because of the large amount of student business we get."
Johnson said he hopes to work more with Seton Hall athletics in the future.
"We're planning on doing stuff with the baseball team," he said. "We are going to continue our Seton Hall presence and hopefully have events on campus."
Currently, Johnson is planning ideas for the summer.
When the weather gets warmer, he uses the outdoor seating area in the restaurant and starts up his live music weekends.
"We try to get a lot of live talent for our outdoor live music weekends during the summer," he said. "This year we are hoping to get some Seton Hall talent to play music."
Johnson says that he now serves breakfast on weekends because of the large demand from Seton Hall students.
"Between 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. on the weekends we get a large breakfast crowd coming from particularly students," Johnson said.
According to Johnson, Seton Hall students make up about 35 percent of his business and he loves working with everyone on campus.
Stony's is located on Sloan Sreet in South Orange and is open Tuesday through Sunday, serving breakfast lunch and dinner.
Rawan Eewshah can be reached at rawan.eewshah@student.shu.
