News & Announcements

Woman-Owned Business Relaunches Café on North Campus

Café Rosedale

Café Rosedale, the newest addition to North Campus, welcomed guests for their grand opening on Monday, November 15th. Located in the space of the former Northern Bites Café, Café Rosedale is fully owned and operated by a woman-owned business. The reimagined and updated café will offer a variety of fresh, simple, and quality dining options for staff, including rotating daily specials like chicken kababs, gyros, and wings, as well as healthy grab-and-go options for breakfast and lunch, a full coffee and tea bar, and specialty pastries. Beginning this week, the café will be open 7am-2pm Monday-Friday.

Café Rosedale replaces the former Northern Bites Café, which closed its doors in early 2020 with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. After Northern Bites closed, Dining Services took the opportunity to evaluate the space’s needs and to explore options for reopening with something new once staff returned to North Campus. Due to limited cooking equipment and an outdated café, Northern Bites had been a challenge to operate, and upon reopening it was important to reimagine a creative way to work within the space’s constraints.

To help reevaluate, they brought in the long-time Dining partner Roya Moshiri, president of Healthy Meal Creations, Inc. This woman-owned business has been in partnership with WashU since 2011 when it began operating the Subway franchise on the Danforth Campus. Together, Dining Services and Moshiri’s team collaborated to determine the best use of the site. After the initial concept for the café was born, they set out developing a menu and relaunching as Café Rosedale, which opens exactly 1 year and 9 months after Northern Bites’ closure. Andrew Watling, Associate Director of Dining Services, believes that the new menu’s focus on simple, fresh, and quality foods puts Café Rosedale in a great spot to be successful and to give the staff at North Campus the best foodservice offerings moving forward. The launch also highlights Dining’s efforts to increase opportunities with diverse businesses throughout campus. 

“Successful management is a result of teamwork, and together WashU and Healthy Meal Creations have created a vibrant brand that will continue to evolve over the next many years” commented Moshiri. The café will be operated by Moshiri, who hopes to evolve the brand in the coming years. Since 2013, her business has catered several events, school programs, parties, and other venues, and she plans to continue focusing on these services in the café’s future.

For more information and to view the full menu, please visit the cafe’s page on the Dining Services website. To learn more about the University’s Supplier Diversity Initiative, visit supplierdiversity.wustl.edu.