There are a lot of great things you can order at Bryant University’s new Black & Gold Café: Acai bowls and Americanos, espressos and avocado toast. Even the maple whipped latte, which has quickly become a campus favorite.
But the best thing you can get from the cafe — the first student-run business on Bryant’s campus in nearly 30 years — isn’t on the menu, says Vincent Emery ’26.
It’s the skills and experience students need to build their future.
Emery, a recent alum and the cafe’s entrepreneur fellow in residence, has already found success with the Lil’ Rhody Coffee business he started in high school, which has become a growing, regional business. Now he wants to ensure that future students develop the skills to create their own path, wherever it might take them.
The cafe’s motto, displayed prominently on the back wall, captures the philosophy: “RUN BY STUDENTS, MADE WITH PASSION.”
Creating the cafe
The spark that became the cafe first flickered when Emery met Michael Hammer '77, the founder of BRYCOL Student Services Foundation, Inc., at a Bryant entrepreneurship event. The more Emery learned about BRYCOL — the student-run, nonprofit corporation that once operated local student services and businesses on Bryant’s campus — the more interested he became.
He was especially taken with its slogan: “Students serving students.”
“I thought, 'Hmmm, that’s a really interesting model; they ran a coffee shop, they ran a bar, they ran a general store. There might be something there,’” Emery remembers. “All of the students at Bryant have heard about the Country Comfort bar we used to have on campus, but nobody knew that BRYCOL ran it.”
The idea took further shape later, when Emery was serving on the Bryant Senior Advisory Council, an advisory body to university leadership that provides student perspectives on campus life, academics, and strategic initiatives. During one session, Inge-Lise Ameer, Ed.D., Bryant’s vice president of student affairs and dean of students, mentioned the possibility of a student-run business in the university’s new Business Entrepreneurship Leadership Center.
Emery saw an opportunity. He presented an idea for the Black & Gold Café to Donna Ng, Bryant’s vice president for business affairs and chief financial officer. Her biggest question, he notes, was: “Would you agree to run it?”
His answer was yes; it was a natural step for the entrepreneur, who wanted to stay involved with his alma mater even after graduation and was selected as his class’s Recent Alumni Trustee, which offered him a three-year seat on Bryant’s Board of Trustees.
With the concept approved Emery worked with the university to create the cafe. In addition to helping to imagine and build out the space, he also assisted with carefully crafting a menu that would both appeal to Gen Z tastes and be affordable for students.
”We want to make sure that we can get somebody in and out for $10 or less,” says Emery, whose own regular order is black coffee and a plain bagel.
The food and drink, however, is only part of the equation for the Black & Gold.
The value of experience
The cafe is located next to the university’s Sprague Center for Entrepreneurship and Design Thinking — an appropriate neighbor for a business designed to put entrepreneurial skills into practice.
“I’m doing this to build an institution. I want to help make sure that I can walk into this building and see that the Black & Gold is around in 20 years.”
Woking at the Black & Gold Café is designed to be an important complement to students’ classroom studies, Emery notes. “There’s no substitute for experience,” he points out, and in the age of artificial intelligence, in-person experience is more valuable than ever.
There’s an invaluable set of skills you can learn from helping to run a business, he argues — time management, responsibility, negotiation, and interpersonal communication — which are transferrable to any students’ major or future career.
“I learned how to manage a company by starting my own, but that’s not for everybody,” he says. “So if you don't have the time or capital or resources to do that, then a great secondary way is by joining Black & Gold.”
Emery is there to show students the rope, he says, a role that is not new to him. In addition to being a prominent figure in Rhode Island’s startup scene, Emery served as one of the Sprague Center’s FOUNDERS (Fellowship for Office Use, Networking, Development, Entrepreneurship, Representation & Support) — Bryant entrepreneurship ambassadors dedicated to growing the university’s startup community.
He also remember what its like to be on the other side of the relationship, recalling how entrepreneur and Bryant Trustee Kim Anderson H’22 became a mentor for him during his time at Bryant. Now Emery wants to be that same sort of guide.
“I’m in an interesting spot. I’m not a student anymore but I was one recently, and I have just a little bit more experience,” he observes. “I'm trying my best to help people out with the skill set I have, and I’m hoping I can pass those skills on to other students so they can build their own thing.”
To that end, every week the cafe’s staff of 15 baristas, bakers, and assistant managers hold a group meeting where they run through the cafe’s performance to figure out what’s working and what isn’t.
“We go through the data, we go through the numbers,” Emery says. “There's a back and forth, and it really is like running a business.”
“I want to make sure every student at the Black & Gold takes something away from this experience, he states. “I hope they find some meaning in their work and that they come understand the power of being a part of a larger team.”
Real business, real connections
But while the Black & Gold sometimes functions as a classroom, it’s still a real business. “We want this place to survive and thrive on its own,” says Emery. Quality and efficiency have long been his twin obsessions with his own business and the cafe is no exception. Emery has been a constant presence there, working into the night even as he continues to run his own business.
“This is a distinctly Bryant space, run by Bryant students."
“We’re holding ourselves to a high standard,” he says.
Eventually, when the cafe is fully established, Emery plans to turn over the reins to someone else. But he aims to leave a lasting legacy. “I’m doing this to build an institution,” he says. “I want to help make sure that I can walk into this building and see that the Black & Gold is around in 20 years.”
Emery also sees the cafe as a potential model for a broader culture of student ventures. “The Black & Gold is the first step in my judgment,” he states. “I’d like to see many more student-run businesses open on campus.”
For now, though, Emery is focusing on growing the cafe, which is already beginning to build a steady customer base. Just two weeks in, the lounge space has become a hangout spot for Bryant students enjoying the cafe’s offerings, and Emery has even seen professors meeting with their students here.
That’s another goal of the Black & Gold cafe, he affirms: to build community. “This is a distinctly Bryant space, run by Bryant students,” Emery notes. “Your barista and baker are the same people who are in your class, or live in your dorm building. They’re the same friends that you go to the dining hall with. Or, if you're a faculty member, they're in your class or your colleagues' class.”
The cafe, he says, is an oasis between classes and activities. “After all, when you can get a good, freshly-brewed coffee — and especially when you can get for an affordable price — your day is just a little bit better.”