MSU students might have another option for late-night meals on the weekends. A new food cart in East Lansing is selling two American favorites combined in one.
Finance sophomore Alex Lennard and Lansing Community College student Hunter Mowers recently opened State’s Cheese Steaks at the corner of Albert Street and Abbot Road, serving up their trademark Philly cheesesteak combined with fries on top. The duo officially launched their business Feb. 14.
“We got Philly cheesesteaks, and really our speciality thing is putting fries on top of the sandwich,” Mowers said. “People have really tended to like that.”
State’s Cheese Steaks is like any other typical vendor with a large cart and built-in grill. While State’s Cheese Steaks is known for its Philly cheesesteak with fries, $6, it also offers soda for $0.75 and bags of chips for $0.50.
The two friends said the idea to start their own food business started last year when they were relaxing in their residence hall.
“Last year we were just sitting in the dorms and thought that we wanted to start a new business, (East Lansing) hadn’t had (a business) yet and (we) saw that they opened a license for it,” Lennard said. “It’s been about a year to get the license, and finally we put it all together.”
The team started off with other plans in mind, such as opening a traditional hot dog stand instead, but that idea quickly was dismissed, Mowers said.
“First we were going to start off doing a hot dog stand, but the city didn’t end up liking that; they wanted something more creative so we came up with this,” Mowers said. “They seemed to like it so we got the license, and now here we are.”
State’s Cheese Steaks will be serving meals every day, with the duo planning to be open for business until about 9 p.m. every Monday to Wednesday and until midnight Thursday to Sunday, Lennard said, although the business has been varying its hours since opening.
Even with State’s Cheese Steaks opening a few blocks away from Conrad’s College Town Grill, 101 E. Grand River Ave., shift manager Grant Pero isn’t worried about losing business.
“We basically have the same people who come in on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and I recognize them so we have our loyal customers,” Pero said.
It cost about $15,000 for the two to get the business up and coming, but Lennard is confident they will make their money back relatively quickly.
“We’ll probably end up making it back pretty fast in a decent amount of time,” Lennard said. “It’s a lot of money, but we can do OK here.”
Similar to Lennard, Mowers is confident in State’s Cheese Steaks future and is hoping the business can grow into something big enough to expand to other locations.
“Maybe if it gets big enough, (we can) start franchising these carts and maybe spread them to different colleges,” Mowers said.
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