Student-run coffee house at UNC carries on Daily Grind legacy

As part of UNC-Chapel Hill’s decision to privatize its student stores, Starbucks coffee is now served at what was once the Daily Grind, a quirky, locally owned coffee shop whose contract UNC allowed to expire this summer.

But the Daily Grind’s 23-year legacy as a business with foundations in the campus community will soon be picked up by a new coffee shop on UNC’s campus. The Meantime Coffee Co., a student-founded and -operated nonprofit, will open in mid-September in the lobby of UNC’s Campus Y building on Cameron Avenue, a short walk across the quad from the Daily Grind’s old location in the student stores building.

The venture’s debut at the beginning of UNC’s first semester without the Daily Grind at first appears to be by design. Co-founder Keegan McBride, a senior chemistry and mathematics major from Raleigh, said the opening date is a lucky coincidence – more a product of how long it’s taken to negotiate the red tape that comes with opening any new business than shrewd opportunism.

“A lot of ways to consume on campus aren’t necessarily local, and the Daily Grind was one of the last institutions on campus that was true for,” McBride said. “People say it looks like a huge opportunity for us from a market perspective, but it’s still a bit of a bummer, because Daily Grind is the kind of thing we really want to see more of on campus.”

The university allowed the Daily Grind’s contract to expire as part of the school’s deal to hand over student stores operations to Barnes & Noble, a decision that led to considerable outcry among those in the campus community who fear that the privatization of university institutions threatens UNC’s campus culture. The Daily Grind’s old home is now occupied by the prosaically named UNC Cafe, which some students say doesn’t have the feel of the old place. It’s “sterile,” says Michaela Dwyer, a graduate student in American studies.

The Meantime’s founders said they hope the Campus Y, UNC’s center for student activism and social entrepreneurship, will provide a more vibrant backdrop for those displaced by the Daily Grind’s departure.

For its first couple of weeks, the Meantime will serve just coffee. But toward the end of September, the cafe will open a full-service espresso bar with a concrete connection to its beloved predecessor.

The Daily Grind’s former owner sold the Meantime some of its old equipment “for cheap,” said Alice Wilder, a former Daily Grind barista who is now a senior at UNC. “They’re using our old espresso machine, and I’m happy to see that it will have a good home.”

UNC students were kicking around the idea of a student-run cafe long before the Meantime’s founders arrived on campus, but McBride said this most recent push began in March 2015 during the second semester of his sophomore year at UNC.

McBride’s colleagues, co-founders Lauren Eaves and Scott Diekema, worked this summer to find a space for the project and incorporate the business as a nonprofit, which in January won startup funding through the Carolina Social Innovation Challenge, in addition to other campus grants totaling about $13,000. The Meantime has also partnered with Carrboro Coffee Roasters, which will supply its coffee, and the Chapel Hill Chamber of Commerce, which has helped the venture negotiate its nonprofit tax status.

UNC’s vendor contracts leave little space for independent on-campus businesses, but Eaves, a junior from London studying environmental health, said school administrators liked their idea enough to lend a hand.

“The complicated thing is that ... we are students generating money on a campus that has some large contracts with big corporate companies,” Eaves said. “You get into some tricky legal territory there, and the way we approached that was to get institutional support through certain administrators who were willing to stick their neck out a little bit for us.”

This effort’s relative success, Diekema said, also owes a lot to the fact that its leaders planned around one of the key problems faced by any student-led initiative: By the time most students find themselves in a position to make a difference on campus, it’s nearly time for them to graduate.

“We needed to show we had young people in key roles to make it happen, because that’s why it hasn’t happened thus far,” said Diekema, who has just begun his sophomore year at UNC. “That was how I entered the picture – I joined the Meantime in my first few days of being a student at Carolina.”

Diekema, an economics major who grew up in Iowa, also spent the last several months working as a barista in Carrboro and learning about the coffee industry.

The Meantime plans to hire exclusively UNC students. Its first hiring push is expected to include about 15 to 20 barista positions in addition to marketing and managerial opportunities.

“There aren’t really spaces on campus where students can get higher-level experience in business positions,” McBride said. “They’ll get a load of experience, whether they’re interested in operations or marketing or really whatever else they want to do.”

To start, the Meantime will operate between 7:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. on weekdays, but McBride said those hours are likely to change.

“Everyone knows 10 p.m. will roll around and you’ll probably want another cup of coffee if you’re up late writing a paper,” he said. “But we want to get our feet under us first.”

This story was originally published September 5, 2016 at 3:46 PM with the headline "Student-run coffee house at UNC carries on Daily Grind legacy."