Butler Brew, one of Butler’s business enterprise pilots, is completely staffed by students. Photo by Natalie Goo.
ISABELLA AMBROSE | STAFF REPORTER | iambrose@butler.edu
On-campus jobs are just one of the many ways students at Butler fill their time and make some extra cash. Butler Brew and Blue’s Closet are unique partnerships between campus vendors and students that give students an opportunity to learn how to run a business.
Emily Hawk, assistant dean of innovation at Lacy School of Business, is responsible for community engagement opportunities for Butler students, faculty and staff. She is also involved with the development of Butler Brew and Blue’s Closet, Butler’s first student-led business enterprise pilots. The goal of these pilots is to include students in more aspects of running a business.
“I want my students, our students, to be [involved] in all things business: in the finance and the marketing and the risk and all of [the] supply chain issues,” Hawk said.
Butler Brew
Bon Appétit Management Company, the operator of Butler Dining, partnered with Lacy School of Business to design a system that allows students to experience working and managing their own coffee shop. However, a student-run coffee shop was something that Bon Appétit had never done before.
“[Bon Appétit] essentially said, ‘We have never, as a company, done this before, and we think we are well positioned to have your students take over all of the things, and we will supervise and make sure that we’re all running down the tracks together,’” Hawk said.
Over the summer, student workers trained virtually with Bon Appétit employees. When the semester began, the students officially stepped into their roles. Students fill a variety of roles at Butler Brew, from CEO to marketing specialist to barista.
Senior Katie Kult is Butler Brew’s chief operating officer. Kult, who is an entrepreneurship major, joined Butler Brew to gain experience running a small business. As chief operating officer, Kult is responsible for scheduling students. When the semester began, she also trained the new Butler Brew student employees.
“Coming from that entrepreneurship background, it’s really interesting to see how a business operates,” Kult said.
Butler Brew is completely staffed by students, which lends itself to conflicts between managing work and school. Arranging the weekly schedule can be difficult, especially when student life — like assignments or sicknesses — gets in the way.
“Being fully staffed by students is definitely a big business challenge,” Kult said. “Obviously, you have to make sure that people are prioritizing school [while] still ensuring that we are able to staff.”
While working at Butler Brew, students get to share their input on store hours, the menu and other business-related decisions. Already, students at the coffee shop have had to adjust item shipments to fulfill student needs.
Butler Brew employees noticed they were left with leftover pastries at the end of the day, so they adjusted their shipment order to reduce waste. In another instance, the coffee shop received an unexpected shipment of drink flavoring, which will be used in their new monthly drink.
Blue’s Closet
Blue’s Closet, led by student interns Giselle Varre and Lia Goss in partnership with the Office of Sustainability, is a thrift store aimed at providing students and faculty with affordable clothing. Varre and Goss are co-managers of the thrift store. They handle a majority of the tasks necessary to running the thrift store, including creating promotional materials, deciding on business strategies and sorting clothes.
On top of integrating student input, the thrift store is designed to fit into each student’s educational experience. Hawk works closely with deans to ensure that students receive the necessary credits for their time at the businesses.
“We know that for you students, you are over-scheduled, you are overworked, you are stressed out, and for you to show up, you deserve curriculum credit to pay for your time and your interest and your engagement,” Hawk said.
In order to better serve students, Blue’s Closet strives to make affordable clothing more accessible.
“We know as college students, sometimes finding the money for new clothes can be really difficult, and having a space on campus that’s easy to get to will hopefully help a lot of students,” Goss said.
Before Blue’s Closet receives a permanent location, the thrift store is hosting three pop-ups during the fall semester. The first pop-up, scheduled for Sept. 23 and 24, is focused on professional attire. Hours for the pop-up on both days are 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
“Because it’s our pilot semester, we are just going to do three pop-up shops,” Hawk said. “We hope that next semester, in the spring, we might find a semi-permanent home for this thrift store, and we hope that a year from now, in fall, it will have a permanent brick-and-mortar location.”
Future pop-up dates are yet to be announced but are expected to open in October and November. The October pop-up will focus on Butler attire, jeans and hoodies. The Office of Sustainability will be collecting clothing from Oct. 4 to 6; donations can be dropped off at the east entrance of the HRC. Only Butler-branded clothing will be accepted.
Giselle Varre, a fifth-year strategic communication major and co-manager of Blue’s Closet, said she is excited to make clothing more accessible to the Butler community.
“Clothes are a necessity, and that necessity is even closer [to campus],” Varre said. “I really think it’s going to be an awesome asset to campus.”
While Butler Brew and Blue’s Closet are the only student-lead businesses on campus, Hawk encourages other students to pitch their business ideas. Students can contact Callie Wright, the lead project manager in the Strategy and Innovation department, and Caleb Norris, the financial analyst at the Transformation Lab, with business pitches.
“I want [students] to have rich and robust experiences,” Hawk said. “I want them to bring their fabulous change and make us better, and I want them to have fun.”
