Those who crave a bacon, egg and cheese on a weekend but do not have the energy to make it to Gilbert’s Café before noon were once out of luck on this campus — until Julian Shorter ‘27 made it his mission to fix that.
“Coming from New Jersey, that was a real staple of my diet,” Shorter said of the sandwich. “It’s a big part of the culture and the diet there, so I just wanted to bring a piece of that to Pennsylvania.”
The result: Bean’s Bagels, a student-owned and operated, made-to-order breakfast sandwich delivery service.
Along with his sous-chef Liam Ward ‘27, Shorter cooks up fresh breakfast sandwiches and pork roll every weekend in a South College common room kitchen for students across campus.
“We just saw that there was a demand on campus for food, especially food delivered to your dorm,” Shorter said. “I love to cook so I thought why not mash those together and come up with a business.”
The operation sources its bagels from “Hot Bagels Abroad,” which has been ranked number one in New Jersey for bagels, according to Shorter.
They have made over 100 bagel-based sandwiches in two weeks of operation, according to Ward.
“That first morning, on that Saturday, [Shorter] came in and woke me up and said, ‘Let’s go work,’” Ward said.
Jack Marich ‘27, the company’s head of marketing, is also from New Jersey. He believes that the growth of the business can be attributed to customer satisfaction and social media outreach through weekly giveaways on its Instagram page.
“Word of mouth has definitely been our best or most prominent way of spreading it out,” Marich said. “So we have our friends try our bagels, they really like it, they tell their friends and it kind of just spreads exponentially.”
Bean’s Bagels prides itself on door-to-door deliveries.
“I get my steps in so I can’t really complain,” Marich said.
Marich found that when customers open up the door, they “always have a smile on their face.”
“Everywhere I go, I have people coming up, ‘Oh my god, your bagels are amazing,’” Marich said.
A Bean’s Bagel breakfast sandwich is currently priced at $7.
“I mean, most of us aren’t working jobs, we don’t have money coming in,” Marich said. “So we want to keep it nice and affordable.”
The commitment to delivery from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays has helped with other necessary skills.
“It helps a lot with time management as well, knowing that I have this big commitment on the weekends, to make sure I get all my other stuff done beforehand and then I could do something that I enjoy doing,” Marich said.
While they hope to expand the business in the future, the creators of Bean’s Bagels are happily filling in the bacon, egg and cheese-shaped hole in Lafayette College.
“After a night out, [students] have bagels delivered right to their door,” Ward said. “Give them something they can’t really find anywhere else.”
