By 6:30 a.m., the lights are on inside Saxbys Café, and Kiley Vaughan is hard at work preparing The University of Texas at Arlington's newest coffee shop to open.
She and another team member warm up the ovens, calibrate the espresso machine, fill the ice bins and check every product in the store. They set out steaming pitchers, prepare food stations, restock milk and write a prep list for the hours ahead. Then comes the coffee, and a lot of it.
The fully student-run café needs to be ready for business by 7 a.m. For Vaughan, a senior finance major and Saxbys' first student CEO, that early morning routine is just one part of a job that extends well beyond the counter.
Like most CEOs, Vaughan is never completely off the clock.
"My phone is always on," she said.
Running the business
The cafe, located next to the UTA Bookstore, opened in August as the first student-run coffee shop at a Texas university. It is operated entirely by undergraduates, who earn wages and academic credit while managing the business, including tracking its profit-and-loss statement.
Vaughan's schedule shifts around her classes. On some days, she arrives around 8 a.m. and stays until 4 p.m., spending two to four hours behind the counter before turning to administrative work: building employee schedules, placing orders, tracking inventory, handling time-off requests and attending meetings.
Related: UTA's new Saxbys Café puts students in charge
Some of the biggest lessons she's learned from the job have come from problems no syllabus could have anticipated. When the team thought the freezer had failed, Vaughan came in prepared to throw out everything inside. After investigating further, she discovered the freezer only needed to be recalibrated. When employee absences leave a shift short and team members can't find a replacement, the problem falls to her. And when the café's supplier failed to deliver bananas, she bought some herself from the grocery store.
"Every day I'm looking at P&L [profit and loss] numbers, thinking about what we should be doing for our café, maybe what isn't working out so well," she said.
Leading her peers
Before taking the role, Vaughan spent five years as a barista, including training other baristas, but she never held a formal leadership position. Now she coaches and manages a team of student workers close to her own age.
She said their similar backgrounds help shape her management style. Team members communicate in similar ways and connect over their pride in being part of UTA. But managing her peers also means occasionally reminding them that they are running a business, whether that means putting phones away behind the counter or keeping the music appropriate for all guests.
"That's just a coaching role," she said.
Vaughan credits two UTA courses, "Managing Organizational Behavior" and "Leadership," with preparing her for those moments. When a team member is having a difficult day, she might give them a five-minute break while she covers their station. When a newer team member is learning the culinary station, she stays close by to answer questions, adjusting her approach to each person's experience level—a concept known as situational leadership that she first studied in class.
"In class, you learn hypotheticals," she said. "But there are a lot of things that I never thought about before. And so now I'm experiencing those things."
Writing the playbook
