A new burger shop made its “soft launch” into the East Lansing restaurant scene last week. Campus Burger, hidden in the alley off of Grand River Avenue and Bailey Street, opened its first store on Oct. 14.
Campus Burger is a one-room shop connected to Jersey Mike’s Subs that sells sliders, hot dogs, fries and more. Its owners own both the neighboring Jersey Mike’s Subs and the Jersey Mike’s Subs off of Saginaw Highway in Lansing.
In a competitive market, Campus Burger employees said they differentiate themselves from other burger chains by making sliders at an affordable price point for students.
“Being in the same industry as some of the giants in the burger industry, like McDonald’s and Burger King and Hardee’s and now you have Five Guys, we cannot compete for a new brand, so we had to find a niche,” founder and CEO of Campus Burger Frank Roye said. “Our niche is sliders. Our niche is the price point. Our niche is the taste. Our niche is for the customer to come back and not just order one burger, but order three and five burgers at a time.”
Campus Burger went through a “soft launch,” in which they did not have a grand opening but instead opened as soon as they were able. The store is looking to keep expanding the brand through social media, adding delivery, catering services and extending their hours, Roye said.
“All our social media, we’re in the process of getting up and going, so now we have the Twitter, the Facebook, the Yelp, the Instagram, so all the social medias are going up right now as we speak,” Roye said. “Once we have a full staff, that we have all these shifts covered, we will be open Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday to late hours in the morning in order to cater to the student body around MSU.”
Multi-unit manager Chris Mayer said Campus Burger will also expand their brand by starting delivery on Oct. 24.
“The radius is huge,” Mayer said. “We go all the way from Okemos Mall to Lansing Mall up to the airport and all the way down to I-96.”
The quality of the food served at Campus Burger is one way the staff hopes to set themselves apart from the competition. Most of the food is Detroit grown and made, Roye said.
“The meat is very high-quality, fresh, never frozen,” Mayer said. “The hotdogs are 100 percent all beef. We have a great veggie burger, chipotle black bean burger, that’s been very popular as well. Everybody loves just the taste, the convenience, the price.”
Campus Burger hopes to cater to students, and this is reflected in some of the names of their products. They sell “The Hangover,” “The All Nighter,” “The Frat Pack” and “The Darty Pack” among others. Roye’s daughter, an MSU alumna, helped create some of the names.
Political theory and constitutional democracy junior Owen Hauser and marketing sophomore Anna Ricci hadn’t heard of the new restaurant before they walked by.
“We went into Sweet Lorraine’s actually, but we came out, popped in, saw the sliders were $4 a pop, and that’s just awesome,” Hauser said. “They’re going to be open until three in the morning, too, which is an absolute game changer for me.”
Hauser and Ricci agreed Campus Burger is a restaurant they will go back to.
“After looking at the prices and everything that they have, we’re like, we are coming back,” Ricci said. “It’s kind of like a nice little neighborhood shop in the hole in the wall.”
Roye said he hopes Campus Burger will continue to draw in more and more customers as the brand expands. He asks customers to put Campus Burger on the map and social media.
“I know once they taste it, they’re not going anywhere,” Roye said. “We’re going to hook them. And we’re going to hook them for life. Keep an eye (out) for Campus Burger coming into your campus very soon.”
