This is a great story of college entrepreneurs finding a need in the market and filling it. They seem to be having fun, too.

Zainab Mudallal of American Journalism Review has the story.

College Isn’t Just About the Food, It’s About Writing About the Food

When Mackenzie Barth, a junior at Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, moved off campus, she struggled with cooking and shopping for groceries. She mostly ate chicken and fries at the campus dining hall, but she wanted to branch out and she had limited experience in the kitchen.

That’s what brought her and junior Sarah Adler together to create a publication to capture the food culture at Northwestern. They called it Spoon University.

“There were all these different types of magazines on campus but nothing on food,” said Barth, co-founder and co-CEO. “Food is a whole new world in college and we thought it was strange there wasn’t a resource addressing it.”

With Adler’s design skills, Barth’s editorial eye and the interest of lots of hungry students, they put together a staff of about 100 and raised enough money to put out three paper issues beginning in the fall of 2012. Then they started to see the demand for the niche publication escalate at other schools across the country.

“We were getting emails from people at other schools asking us to help them start chapters,” said Barth. “We figured the need is bigger than just Northwestern, so we made it a national resource for college students.”

After Adler and Barth graduated the following June, they launched Spoon’s website, and saw an expansion to 30 schools in five months.

It now has a reach at 50 schools because of contributors from across the country, according to Barth.