Meet the co-owners of Campus Craves: Hunter Haines and Brayden Sammons.
The late-night snack shop is loosely open until the late night crowd dies down. It offers items like fried pickles, mac and cheese bites, and an ice cream-donut sandwich called the B-Town Bun. It’s safe to say the shop is not a traditional one.
Nor are its owners. They’re also full-time students.
The shop isn’t an experiment for the two of them. It’s a culmination of a dream they’ve shared since before their high school days in Warsaw, Indiana.
“Since, like, eighth grade we’ve tried to start a business of some sort,” Haines said. “Our highest pinnacle before this one was a t-shirt company but we were never serious enough to actually do it.”
Now, the two of them are serious enough to do it. And after nearly two years of planning, financial obstacles and meandering through meetings between classes, they’re officially open for business.
Running a shop while also managing full-time student duties has to be a great challenge, right? Not necessarily, according to the two.
“The most challenging thing to run it is still being students, but it’s not that hard,” Sammons said. “”It took a while in the beginning to find the right balance, but I feel like now we’re at a pretty good equilibrium.”
Haines echoed his co-owner. “To be completely honest with you, it has not been that hard,” he said. “This semester I’m actually getting my best grades ever.”
Haines also said despite being in the middle of a number of popular bars in a busy college town, the late night crowd coming in from the bars hasn’t caused much trouble.
“I’ve heard some nightmares at Taco Bell, but we haven’t gotten to that point yet,” he said with a smile. “No one has been too rowdy or anything like that.”
Once the two graduate from IU, they don’t see the store’s growth stopping. In fact, they see this location as the beginning of something they want to make nationally relevant.
“First, we want to make sure that this is the destination in Bloomington for desserts, we hope to make it a destination for an altogether meal,” Sammons said. “Towards the end of the line, we want to make sure we can get that same type of happiness to every large university around the United States.”
