Egg Salad, Tuna Salad, Cream Cheese & Jelly

Egg Salad, Tuna Salad, Cream Cheese & Jelly

by David Levitt

It was the year 1955-6, my senior year in college, and I believe it was one of the first years the new dorms were up on the quad. There were four dorms. Three were men's dorms - Cooke, Schoellkopf, and one other. A women's dorm was MacDonald.

The only food they had on campus was sold during the day, and at night, if you wanted food, you'd have to go down to Main Street. There was some fast food chain on Main Street. But it was kinda cold to go there.

I had the idea of seeing if I'd be able to have sandwiches made, have them at the dorm, and have them distributed late in the afternoon and in the evening when people would like them. So I had to get approval from the Dean, who was Dean Somers at the time. He gave me permission to do it, providing that I got a food handler's license from the City of Buffalo.

Since my partner was a fraternity brother whose father was in the produce market, he had the ability to get the food on a daily basis, and we went and got the food handler's license. I don't even remember the cost of the license - it was nothing. We got permission to be the exclusive maker and distributor of sandwiches. I remember we had egg salad, tuna salad, cream cheese and jelly, and maybe a fourth selection.

At the time, I was going to basketball practice during the day, because I was on the basketball team. My partner and the women made the sandwiches in one of the basements in the dorms during the afternoons. We put them in cardboard boxes to make them available for distribution at night; there were enough boxes for the sandwiches to be sold to boys and girls in the various dorms in the evening. I picked out some fraternity brothers of mine on campus who were willing to sell them.

My partner and I each made between $75 and $100 a week after expenses. We were able to pay the women for making the sandwiches, and my fraternity brothers who sold them got a commission for every sandwich they sold.