Saxbys Opens Second Cafe on Drexel's Campus Run Completely By Students

The second Saxbys cafe on Drexel's campus will be located in the Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building at 33rd and Chestnut Streets.

Saxbys Chief Executive Officer and Founder Nick Bayer will join Drexel University President John Fry to commemorate the opening of a second cafe on Drexel’s campus. Opening its doors on June 27 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the new Saxbys is the company’s second cafe at Drexel and the third in the nation exclusively operated under student supervision as part of Saxbys’ Experiential Learning Program.

The new Saxbys will be located at the Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building (PISB) at 33rd and Chestnut Streets. As part of the opening celebration, Bayer and Fry will pull the cafe’s first official espresso shots at 11 a.m. Saxbys won’t charge guests for any menu items during opening day. Instead, guests are encouraged to pay as they wish as all money raised will go to the Workshop School, a public high school in West Philadelphia whose students completely designed and built the majority of the new cafe’s furniture. Saxbys will also match 100 percent of all money raised to double the impact of each donation.

“Our partnership with Drexel University has been game-changing,” said Bayer. “We established ourselves not only as a hospitality company but as an educational one, providing young entrepreneurs real-world business opportunities that exemplify the social impact we seek to make in Philadelphia and every other community we serve. This new cafe will further fortify our work so far.”

Saxbys initially partnered with Drexel and its Close School of Entrepreneurship in 2015 to open the nation’s first Experiential Learning cafe at 65 N. 34th St. The cafe set the standard of the program, in which students earn credit through Drexel's cooperative education (co-op) program. Since the 2015 opening, eight Drexel students have assumed the role of Student Cafe Executive Officer and taken full responsibility of the business. Several students have since joined Saxbys in full-time positions, including inaugural Saxbys Drexel CEO Kelsey Goslin, who opened the initial cafe in April 2015. Tauheed Baukman, a Drexel junior majoring in business and engineering, will serve as Student Cafe Executive Officer at the new Saxbys. Baukman will fully manage the cafe’s financials and a team of 25 student employees during his six-month co-op.

Similar to Drexel, Saxbys partnered with Millersville University and the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education network to open the company’s second Experiential Learning cafe at Millersville in January 2017 to resounding success.