When Jason Steinberg tutored foreign students at an Ohio college, he noticed that Americans and students from overseas spent little time together. He thought the young adults needed an environment that would encourage them to talk while working toward a common goal.
So when he came to Erie last year to work at Gannon University, he pitched his idea for a campus coffee shop that would employ students from the U.S. and abroad. Steinberg, the associate director of Gannon's international student office, already had 30 students volunteer to sell coffee outside of his office for 50 cents a cup, so there was clearly a demand.
This spring Steinberg and Kurt Hersch, director of Gannon's entrepreneurship program, guided three students in an independent study with the goal of developing a business plan for the coffee shop, which they named the One Green World Café. They secured space in an old bar the college purchased because of its location near the school's dorms. It cost about $120,000 to transform the bar, with $15,000 coming from student organizations. The university loaned the rest of the money.
The café serves fairly traded coffee and internationally inspired food made by an Erie charity that assists refugees who have resettled locally. Steinberg reclaimed discarded campus furniture for the coffee shop, which opened last week.
The plan is for the One Green World Café to be a self-sustaining, student-run business. At least two students – ideally one American and one from abroad – will work there at a time. “They work together. They interact,” Hersch says. “Then maybe both sets of friends will start interacting.”
Sources: Kurt Hersch and Jason Steinberg, Gannon University
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen