Fly By soars after first week open on campus
Flyer Enterprises’ newly named business, Fly By, crushed expectations in the first week of
students returning to campus. Photo of Fly By window courtesy of Maddie Bartsche.
Tori Miller | Staff Writer
Previously named The Galley, Fly By is still located in the basement of Kennedy Union, but has made alterations to its menu, including breakfast and lunch options, milkshakes and donuts.
Lead by senior Trent Kingan, a double major of Supply and Chain Management and Marketing with a minor in Spanish, Fly By seeks to serve the student body and rebuild from last year. Kingan has multiple years of experience working within Flyer Enterprises (FE). During his first year, he worked at Art Street Café. In his second year, he was promoted to operations manager for The Chill, and for the last two years he has been the divisional president of The Galley (now Fly By) and Stu’s Landing.
The success of Fly By has shocked FE members and opened up exciting opportunities for the rest of the academic year.
“We have, like any goal that I have had, crushed it,” Kingan said. “I wanted to do the best that that space has ever done. And in these past three days, we have started out stronger than any year that The Galley has ever seen. Our business is booming right now.”
Providing insight behind the name change and rebranding of Fly By, Kingan said, “One of my managers thought of that name. And we were like, that’s a great name. We went to dining services and we went to CSI, because it’s kind of a shared space that the Hangar is, and everybody seemed to like it. So, we just moved forward with that.”
There is actually deep-seeded history and thoughtfulness behind the name. In 1990, the first FE division was named Rudy’s Fly-Buy, which was marketed as a small convenience store. As a way to pay homage to the original division and to celebrate the 20th anniversary of FE this year, the name fit the theme perfectly.
“And then with that, we were really like okay, well nothing that we are doing is the Galley anymore,” Kingan said. “So calling it the Galley is kind of just a misrepresentation of what the Galley was. So we were thinking, if we want to really go all in with this, we can’t just change what the Galley sells, we need to change the galley. So that’s why the Fly By was created.”
For more information, there’s a timeline on FE’s website featuring a fully-developed account of its history.
At the end of last year, there was a survey sent out to the student body in order to gauge the popularity of menu items and to see what should be changed for fall 2021. While milkshakes were an overwhelmingly popular response, Kingan said that ice cream was not the most stable item to generate a profit. While students loved the dessert options, having long lines would violate social distancing guidelines by the CDC’s standards and make the business only receive foot traffic during the later hours of the evening.
Kingan shared that FE heavily considered students’ responses, while thinking of what needed to be added to itsrepertoire.
“We wanted to try to think of a way to make a more staple product offering that people would come for at all times of the day,” Kingan said. “We focused on still trying to include the ice cream that the campus so desperately wanted.”
This year, Fly By will be selling various bagel themed items, such as breakfast/lunch sandwiches and pizza bites, the customizable donuts from last year, and there will be a F’Real milkshake machine. The purpose of this machine is to provide the highly demanded milkshakes without having to worry about cost of materials and length of lines in regard to COVID-19. The F’Real machine will offer six different types of milkshake flavors and two new smoothie options. Also joining the menu, Fly By provides various vegetarian options for students with dietary restrictions.
Kingan shared that this year has not only been better in sales thus far but that seeing students around campus and enjoying itsproducts is very rewarding. If you haven’t tried Fly By’s new menu items, you should stop by KU and see for yourself what they have to offer.
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