Since its opening in March, Craves Delivery has experienced a warm welcoming from Ball State students.

Craves Delivery is a snack delivery service started by Ball State junior Zachary Cable and former Indiana University student Drew Crowe.

The business operates from 9 a.m. to 4 a.m. and offers over 40 different drink and snack options including chocolates, energy drinks, candy and Starbucks drinks.

The Craves Delivery team originally started with just five members, including Cable and Crowe, but now the business has grown to 13 members in less than six months.

“Ball State is a large campus, but I honestly was not expecting to have as many orders as we have had and the great feedback we have got," Cable said. “It came a lot quicker and a lot smoother that I had originally thought.”

One of the reasons Craves has been able to grow is because of the unique paid internship it offers to Ball State students. The internship offers three different types of positions including marketing, accounting and delivery.

Crowe created the internship not only as a way to help expand the business, but also to give opportunities to students looking to gain work experience.

“A lot of my friends that graduated can’t find jobs because of lack of experience, so what we decided to do was to give an opportunity to get real experience,” he said.

Within one year, the Craves team has had over 10 interns. The high amount of interns has to do with the short-term contracts Craves offers to applicants.

“Our internship contracts are for a month to two months," he said. "We don’t want them obligated to something long term they don’t know they can do."

Cable said one reason they have had success is because of the outreach toward the Ball State community.

“We went to go speak to the business fraternity to see if it was something that interested them and we had some people who called back and were interested,” he said. “We [have also gone] to the [Miller College of Business] and set up a table in the hallway and had an informational stand that students could see.”

Besides outreaching to potential interns, Craves Delivery has also worked to spread awareness of its company by setting up at the Scramble Light.

“We go there about once every three weeks," Cable said. "We want to give back — we give away free Starbucks and snacks and little fliers, trying to gain customer awareness."

Besides giving students an opportunity to pad their résumé, Craves Delivery also partners with the Muncie Big Brothers and Big Sisters program by donating 50 cents from every order.

Crowe said money isn’t everything, and it is important to help out the community.

“I’m really big on legacy over currency — that’s something we really want to do with Craves,” he said. “One way I thought we could do that is by giving students the opportunity to give back.”

Although there is no timetable for an expansion into other universities, Crowe did say he hopes to expand the business at some point to Indiana University.

“IU is the obvious one, and I have quite a few business contacts at a lot of universities and they are people I trust and respect, and our focus right now is getting to the point where we could do that.”

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