Jazzman's Cafe: Upscale Coffeehouse Morphs Into Star Of College Campuses, Hospitals, Corporate Dining

Here is a recipe for retail success in on-site foodservice: Take one music-theme coffee concept, add two men with entrepreneurial skills, infuse with cash from a multibillion-dollar corporation and bring to a boil, seasoning with various new elements to taste as the concept cooks.

Do all that, and you just might come up with a restaurant as successful as Jazzman's Cafe, the bakery-cafe conceived by Allentown, Pa.-based food management firm The Wood Co. and allowed to blossom by Wood's relatively new owner, Sodexho USA.

In less than five years, Jazzman's has gone from an idea sketched on a single sheet of paper to more than 100 units located on college campuses and in hospitals and corporations. More impressive is the fact that in 2002 Sodexho opened a freestanding storefront in Bethlehem, Pa., a rare development for an on-site operator.

Jazzman's easily has become Sodexho's hottest commodity, with the company receiving requests to install more locations outside of the typical on-site venues from such cities as New York; Orlando, Fla.; and Akron, Ohio.

In an industry where success can be elusive even for hard-core commercial restaurateurs, Jazzman's has become a force in the on-site industry precisely because its developers have taken the bold step of ignoring the fact that they operate in what many people still consider "noncommercial" foodservice.

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