Student-run Meantime Coffee expands to the Junction
The café begun in the Campus Y now has a second location in the Innovate Carolina space on Rosemary Street.
They go together like espresso and steamed milk — Carolina’s student-run coffee shop and the University’s hub for innovation. Meantime at the Junction is now the official source of caffeine for Innovate Carolina.
On Nov. 8, coffee lovers began lining up three hours before the doors opened, the line stretching down Rosemary Street to the next block. Sure, the shop was giving away free mugs, coffee and pastries and raffling off a chance for free coffee for a year. But these first customers also came to show solidarity with a business that checks all the boxes for social entrepreneurship.
“I wanted to celebrate this sustainable, student-run organization getting a new space and a new opportunity,” said Savannah Matthews ’27, a public relations major.
Welcoming guests to the ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier that morning, Meantime CEO Noreen Mansoor ’25 reminded them of the history of The Meantime Coffee Co. In 2016, three undergraduates came together to form an enterprise that would provide entrepreneurial experience, serve the community and “be a force of good in a student’s life,” said Mansoor, an economics major from Charlotte.
For the past eight years, Meantime has operated a café on the first floor of the Campus Y in alignment with its social justice mission and values. The nonprofit promotes sustainability, uses locally sourced products and pays its employees a living wage.
Meantime also gives back to the community, donating $50,000 in 2023 to support student programs, student social justice work and organizations selected through the annual “barista vote” of the 32-member staff. With this second location, Meantime took on the additional responsibility of funding an Innovate Carolina Junction coworking membership for a nonprofit group to be named later.
“It’s really exciting because the missions are so aligned,” said Sheryl Waddell, director of economic development and innovation hubs at Innovate Carolina. At the Junction, “coworkers can come. They can work here. They can collaborate here. And how better to collaborate than over a cup of coffee?”
The coffee shop occupies the space immediately inside the Junction’s public entrance at 136 E. Rosemary St. It will be open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday. A new version of Meantime’s logo, created with dark and light green moss, hangs on the wall behind the counter. New Meantime at the Junction mugs feature two cartoon drinks clinking cups over the slogan “Because two is better than one.”
When the symbolic opening day ribbon was finally snipped, staff members jumped in the air and gave each other high fives. They smiled big and posed for photos, holding Instagram frames with the commemorative date in the corner.
But the day brought other emotions, too. Meantime at the Junction co-founder Rose Houck ’25 teared up when talking about how much paying a living wage to employees, a policy certified at Meantime in 2021, has meant to students like her.
“Many of us are paying our way through college, and this experience has significantly shifted the outlook of our futures,” said the data science and biology major from Greensboro. “It has allowed many of us to begin to dream instead of treading above water.”
Houck also pointed out the significance of the nonprofit’s unusual name. “As college students, we talk so much about our career aspirations that we forget what we can accomplish in our four years here in college. It’s just what we’re doing ‘in the meantime,’” she said. But Meantime staff members are already putting their values to work. “We believe you don’t have to wait.”
View this post on Instagram