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The basics:

• Montclair State University partnered with its on-campus dining provider and coffee chain Saxbys to create a student-run café.
• The Saxbys Experiential Learning Platform initiative aims to develop undergraduates’ transferable skills and leadership stories.
• Students gain practical experience in business management, leadership and communication through the program.

A student-run café is teaching undergraduates at Montclair State University the grind of running their own business. After renovating a former foodservice space in its Feliciano School of Business building, the university partnered with on-campus dining provider Gourmet Dining and Philadelphia-based Certified B coffee chain Saxbys on an opportunity that offers students tangible work experience as a supplement to traditional classroom learning.

The location is the newest to open as part of The Saxbys Experiential Learning Platform, which launched in 2015 as the nation’s first student-run café where students can earn full academic credit and wages through a university cooperative education program.

Over the past nine years, Saxbys has built a network of two dozen E.L.P. cafés across six states at schools like University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, Penn State University, Lehigh University, Boston University, Georgia State University and Purdue University. Within New Jersey, it added outposts at Rider University and Rowan University in fall 2021 and Rowan College at Burlington County in spring 2022.

“We’re just getting started,” Saxbys Chief Executive Officer and founder Nick Bayer said. “Our goal is to provide students with opportunities to develop transferrable, industry-agnostic power skills and tangible stories of leadership, which will ultimately help them launch their careers as they approach graduation.”

Founded in 2005, Saxbys isn’t actually a coffee company, Bayer said. Instead, he sees it more as an education company fueled by food, beverage and hospitality on a mission to “Make Life Better” by empowering the next generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs.

Before the pandemic, student-run operations only made up about a quarter of Saxbys’ business. However, Bayer began to re-evaluate the company’s business model and social impact practices after mandated shutdowns kept his cafés closed from March 2020 to August 2020.

As result, the company began pursuing B Corp Certification – emblematic of a commitment to an inclusive, equitable and regenerative economy. It obtained the designation in October 2020. Now, it is focused squarely on “fueling a future of better business” through initiatives like the E.L.P. cafés.

Bayer described the program as a chance for students to supplement “their higher education by taking full responsibility for running their own dynamic, bustling business in the center of campus.”

“Saxbys student leaders leverage hands-on experiences that bolster their academic, career and personal outcomes through coursework, crediting and micro-credentials aligned directly with the practical applications gained at the Saxbys E.L.P. café,” he said.

Dawn Meza Soufleris, vice president for student development and campus life at Montclair State, was already familiar with Saxbys. The company debuted a fully student-operated café in 2017 at her previous employer, LaSalle University in Philadelphia.

A year and a half ago, when Montclair State was nearing the end of its contract with a third-party service for on-campus food and retail operations, the school put out a bid and received proposals from three companies, including Gourmet Dining in Madison.

“There started to be a conversation about bringing in either New Jersey-based smaller food businesses and also things that would cater to a campus community like ours. And the conversation started about Saxbys when one of the vendors we eventually selected mentioned they had a cooperative relationship with them,” Meza Soufleris said.

At Gourmet, the family-run business has several longstanding relationships within the higher education marketplace, including Seton Hall University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Kean University, Rutgers University, New Jersey City University and Stevens Institute of Technology.

In recent years, Gourmet helped facilitate E.L.P. cafés at several other schools it has contracts with, like Rider and Rowan.

Meza Soufleris was thrilled to bring the initiative to MSU, saying, “It’s an incredible entrepreneurial hands-on experience for students to run a business and it seemed to us like a perfect match.”

Venture Café, the previous foodservice operation at MSU’s business school, “hadn’t generated a lot of revenue,” she said. “And there just wasn’t a lot of traffic under our former dining service [Chartwells]. So, we renovated it and worked with Saxbys and Gourmet Dining, who is now our dining provider.”

Since Saxbys’ April 2 grand opening, Meza Soufleris said “it’s been a smash hit” for its all-day breakfast, grab & go offerings and curated beverages at “student-friendly prices.”

Open Monday through Thursday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Friday 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saxby’s menu includes cold brew, espresso drinks, smoothies, coffee, energy drinks and tea. In addition to baked goods and all-day breakfast items, Saxbys is becoming known on campus for its variety of grilled cheese sandwiches, like buffalo chicken, three cheese, cheesesteak, bacon, pickled and spinach with pesto.

Meza Soufleris said, “When students lead and run every aspect of the café, it brings excitement to campus dining choices, and to the overall campus vibe. The concept and fun menu is also going to be another game-changer regarding student engagement. Food is life. It’s one way we universally connect with each other.”

She also predicted it’ll “quickly become one of the busiest and favored campus hang-out locations on our campus at Montclair.”

The daily grind

While the academic component of the E.L.P. café is housed in MSU’s business school, Saxbys handles coordination and organization of the site, including hiring and training staff members. The company also takes care of appointing a “student café chief executive officer” and brings them down to headquarters in Philadelphia so they can learn the ins and outs of the coffee business.

At MSU, Saxbys selected business management major Danielle Levitin from a pool of about 10 applicants to serve as the inaugural student CEO. Now, she is in charge of every aspect of the business, from overseeing development of a team of about two dozen student employees and community leadership to managing the profit & loss statement.

As part of her rotation, Levitin is taking a break from classes but will earn a full semester of college credit and competitive wages. She’s also getting mentorship and invaluable experience learning operations, sales and management.

“I wanted to apply for the position because the role is such a golden opportunity, where I had the ability to take what I would be learning in a classroom and apply it to the real world,” she said. “It’s not an opportunity you come by often.”

Levitin, who has a concentration in marketing, said, “I knew that I would learn more and gain more experience from taking this position than I could in any classroom. Not only that, but I also loved the idea of the role giving me that differentiation from other college business students, having had the involvement in managing a team and a fully operational business, and being the first person at Montclair to do so with Saxbys.”

Levitin is not yet sure of what career path she’ll pursue after graduation in 2027. However, she knows it’ll be “something entrepreneurial and something that merges my interests with by business acumen.”

Since taking on the role, Levitin said, “The biggest lesson I’ve learned so far is the sheer importance of communication when it comes to working with others to any capacity. It’s important to be in tune with those around you and to be on the same page with things as often as possible. I’ve also learned more in regard to how to approach important, and sometimes uncomfortable conversations, and their importance in the long run of team connection and overall workflow.”

Meza Soufleris said, “We were all fascinated that a freshman was selected in their second semester because we were like ‘wow, that’s a lot for your freshman year.’ She’s incredible, very poised and confident. And just absorbed the training, information and mentorship through Saxbys like a sponge.”

At the end of Levitin’s stint as student CEO, she’ll do a presentation about the financials and other aspects of running a business before turning it over to the next student CEO. Once Levitin wraps up, she plans on continuing to work at Saxbys as a team lead and certified trainer.

Meza Soufleris pointed out that student staff can stay on with Saxbys if they want – even after the semester ends.

“That was my experience at LaSalle. They love working in that environment,” she said.

For more information on job opportunities with Saxbys, visit saxbyscoffee.com/careers.

Bayer said Saxbys has outcomes data showing that its student CEOs “are ahead of the curve on just about every metric related to college graduation and placement.” All past and present student CEOs have either graduated on time or are on track to do so. By contrast, the National Center for Education Statistics says that less than half of full-time students at four-year schools graduate within four years. And despite being early in their careers, the majority of student CEO alumni have already attained leadership positions with their employers. While the Harvard Business Review found that it takes the average college grad seven years to achieve a leadership role, student CEO alumni have, on average, done so within a year of getting their diploma.

“It should come as no surprise that when hiring for roles at Saxbys’ corporate headquarters, we turn to the best minor league in business – our student café teams,” he said. “The majority of our corporate café operations team is made up of former student café leaders.”

Competitive landscape

On campus, MSU has more than 20 food options, like Dunkin’, Panera Bread, Jersey Mike’s, Panda Express, The Halal Shack and Amazon Go. There are also two traditional dining halls, a diner and two all-you-can-eat buffets with rotating menus.

While the number of dining locations “may sound crazy at first,” Meza Soufleris pointed out that, on an average day, the on-campus population is about 16,000 people. That means Saxbys is up against a lot of competition, which will give students an opportunity to learn how to establish their café and become a real player in the market.

Levitin is confident Saxbys will make its mark in the community. “I think that Saxbys is already differentiated by the fact that it is student run and student led,” she said. “But it is further differentiated from other spots because it offers different food options than other places on campus. Our menu is super unique with its variety of breakfast and lunch options, along with energy drinks and cold brew.”

Meza Soufleris believes the partnership “aligns perfectly with our commitment to deliver top-notch entrepreneurial and experiential learning opportunities to students.”

“Whether it is in internships, externships, micro-internships, summer opportunities or graduate student practicums, they’re all working and getting hands-on with whatever field that they are studying or entering,” she said.

“And we are also very community engagement focused, so there are a lot of students that are getting some real-world experience through community engagement, civic engagement and volunteering,” Meza Soufleris explained. “That’s a huge push with Montclair President [Jonathan] Koppell, who said very clearly that we’re going to increase those opportunities for hands-on learning and volunteer/community engagement.”

“Most of our students going through this university are now having those kinds of experiences, whether they are curricular-based or community engagement-based. We think that’s really important so that when they leave here – if they’re not going right into graduate school and they’re going right into the work world – that they take real life experience with them to be able to get a job,” she said.

Bayer believes MSU “is a great partner and home” for The Saxbys E.L.P.

“Montclair State University’s commitment to co-curricular learning for all students aligns seamlessly with Saxbys commitment to providing transformational opportunities for the next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs,” he said.

He went on to note Saxbys’ relationship with Gourmet Dining, calling the company “an advocate of engaged learning and serving the community.” He also pointed to Saxbys’ previous experience working with Meza Soufleris at LaSalle.

“We’re thrilled to be working with great partners both at Gourmet Dining and MSU,” said Bayer, adding, “We’re excited for this innovative partnership to drive student success while creating career-ready graduates to lead.”

Anthony Frungillo, executive vice president of Gourmet Dining, shared, “It is our goal to bring together great partners that can mutually benefit each other. In this case, Saxbys and Montclair were a perfect fit.”