Entrepreneur Wins Contract Fight With UCI : Catering: Gourmet coffee cart business gets a one-year extension at medical center.

ORANGE — In a bid to avoid a court fight over their attempt to oust a small gourmet coffee cart business from their campus, officials at UCI Medical Center have signed a new, one-year contract with Divi Espresso owner Kelly Jeffrey.

“I’m elated,” Jeffrey said. The 32-year-old entrepreneur went to war with the medical center two months ago when she was told that she was being replaced by catering giant Marriott Corp. “This shows that the big guy doesn’t always win,” she said.

Although in April they had tabbed Marriott Corp., which operates the cafeteria at the medical center, to replace Jeffrey, center officials backed off when she refused to go quietly. They announced in June that they would seek competitive bids.

But Jeffrey refused to bid, maintaining that she had been given an oral contract extension in December. She retained an attorney to block the medical center from awarding the contract to another vendor. Center officials, she said, contacted her lawyer June 23 and offered a new 12-month deal.

In an unsigned, one-sentence statement issued late Friday, center officials said simply that they were “pleased to announce agreement for a one-year contract” awarded to Divi Espresso.

Jeffrey’s old and new contracts both call for her to pay 15% of gross revenues. She said that the cart generated about $100,000 in sales last year--netting $15,000 for the center.

She bought the cart in 1993 with a $20,000 profit-sharing check from her previous employer and received a one-year contract renewal in June, 1994. She said she told the medical center’s purchasing director in December that she wanted to expand the business but was hesitant because she had only six months left on her contract. Jeffrey said she was told that center officials were pleased with her and that she should consider her contract good for another year.

Jeffrey said that that assurance prompted her to spend $2,000 on new equipment and led her husband, Alan, to quit his hotel management job in April--two months after the couple’s daughter was born--to assist in running the small business.

On Friday, with the struggle behind them, the Jeffreys said they were looking forward to rekindling a working relationship with the center.