Tepper School Students Turn Ideas Into Impact in Restaurant Builder Course

This fall, undergraduate students took on a unique challenge that involved designing, planning, and eventually opening a student-run on-campus restaurant.

Open to students across CMU, the new Restaurant Builder course blends business fundamentals, hospitality operations, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Created and taught by Joe Beaman, Director of Dining Services and Adjunct Professor of Management, the course guided students through the full process of launching a dining concept, from ideation to implementation.

The course is an extension of the university’s partnership with Chartwells Higher Education, which is expanding hands-on learning opportunities by integrating real-world professional experiences into campus dining programs. Students learned directly from industry experts and campus leaders in areas such as brand strategy, financial modeling, design, franchise development, customer research, and restaurant management.

“We’re building out a restaurant business, but if you take the restaurant away, the lessons are the same,” Beaman said. “Students learn how to understand customer needs, how to build a financial model, how to brand and market a concept, and how to work with experts across campus. The interdisciplinary piece is so important. Students from architecture, engineering, fine arts, and business all bring different strengths. That’s what makes this work so well.”

Throughout the semester, students met with prominent Pittsburgh entrepreneurs, including Matt Marietti (Tepper School alumnus and owner of DeFer Coffee), Lauren Townsend (Millie’s Homemade Ice Cream), and Sam Patti (La Prima). Leaders from Chartwells, University Architecture and Operations, and CMU’s University Communications and Marketing team also taught sessions on brand strategy, operations, and large-scale dining management. At the same time, students gained hands-on experience running CMU’s thriving student-led restaurant, Capital Grains.

The culmination of the course was the final pitch, where small teams proposed a new student-run dining concept to join the campus restaurant portfolio. This year’s winning concept—an artisan toast restaurant—will begin piloting in spring 2025, with plans to fully launch in fall 2025 alongside Capital Grains.

True to Carnegie Mellon’s roots, students describe the course as both entrepreneurial and deeply collaborative.

“Food is an important way for me to connect with others, so a restaurant is a place that holds countless cherished memories. I also love how catering and hospitality are very down-to-earth, and closely connected to everyone's everyday life,” said Jennifer Xie, a Tepper School junior who took the course. “There were a lot of incredible experiences and insightful takeaways from this class, but for me personally, I would say the team collaboration part was the most valuable.”

According to Beaman, that collaborative aspect was both intentional and essential.

“There’s so much students have to negotiate as a team. What’s non-negotiable, where they can compromise, and how to merge ideas into one unified concept,” he said. “Those are real entrepreneurial skills. And because the winning concept will open on campus, everyone contributes.”

The course is part of a broader effort at CMU and the Tepper School to expand experiential learning and experiential entrepreneurship and opportunities that take academic concepts into real-world settings where students can see the impact of their work. With the opening of the new artisan toast concept next fall, CMU students will soon enjoy the next addition to a growing lineup of student-created dining options.