Storm Brews Over Coffee Cart Ouster : Dispute Goes to Very Top of Marriott

Kelly Jeffrey always dreamed of running her own business. So when layoffs started thinning the ranks at Marriott Corp.’s hotel division last year, she decided to take the plunge.

She quit her job and, using her $20,000 profit-sharing check from Marriott, bought a cappuccino cart and began serving customers outside the cafeteria at UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange. The cafeteria was managed by Marriott, and she liked the idea of working alongside the company that nurtured her budding business career.

But now, she says, UCI is throwing her out--and telling her that Marriott is behind her ouster. The giant hospitality chain, she said she was told, doesn’t want the competition.

Doctors at UCI Medical’s neonatal unit were so incensed--especially since Kelly Jeffrey gave birth only three months ago and her husband quit his job last month to help run the business--that they launched a petition drive. So far, 594 of the center’s 2,000 employees have signed the protest.

Employees vow to boycott any espresso-cappuccino stand that the medical center or Marriott puts in place of Jeffrey’s Divi Espresso cart. Some have started wearing buttons proclaiming: “Save the Cup. Keep Divi at UCI.”

The resulting fracas has gone all the way to the top: J. William Marriott Jr., chairman, chief executive and president of Marriott International in Washington, has ordered a review of Jeffrey’s situation. His office says she will be receiving a personal letter from him within a few days.

“Marriott doesn’t force people out of business,” a spokeswoman in the chairman’s office said Wednesday--placing the onus back on the medical center.

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UCI’s position is that it simply chose not to renew a one-year contract, said spokeswoman Carolyn Cohen Carter. She said Jeffrey “is not being forced out of business either by Marriott Corp. or UCI Medical Center.”

Medical center officials, however, have asked Marriott if it would be willing to run a coffee cart at the center, and the company has said it would do so if asked, said Tony Alibrio, president of Marriott’s Connecticut-based health services division.

The coffee cart has become the Jeffreys’ livelihood since husband Alan gave up his job as manager of a bed-and-breakfast inn near Disneyland to help out after the birth of their daughter in February.

“I thought everything was going really well,” Kelly Jeffrey says. “In December, my husband and I decided to spend some money expanding the business, but I was concerned because the contract was up on June 30.”

She says she met with the medical center’s purchasing director, Kirby Mellott, who assured her that “I was safe” and could consider her contract extended. With that, Jeffrey dipped into the family’s dwindling savings and bought about $2,000 worth of new equipment for the cart.

In early April, two weeks after Alan Jeffrey quit his job to help out, UCI dropped the bomb: Divi Espresso’s contract would not be renewed.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Kelly Jeffrey said. “I called Kirby (Mellott) and asked why, and he said it was because I was in direct competition with Marriott.” Mellott could not be reached for comment.

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On the same day of the cancellation notice, Jeffrey says, her one part-time employee was offered a job at the Marriott-run cafeteria. The cafeteria management also circulated a flyer that day announcing that a new espresso cart would start serving the medical center two days after Divi Espresso was to shut down.

On Wednesday afternoon, a frazzled Kelly Jeffrey manned her cart while waiting anxiously for word on her fate. “I knew running a business wouldn’t be easy,” she said. “But I never thought it would be like this.”