Keeping It ‘smpl’: Student-Led Food Truck Brings Burgers to Late-Night Collegetown
Three hundred burger orders in one night at the smpl Burger food truck marked a milestone for self-appointed “chief burger officers” Jean Salamoun ’25 and Ali Haroon ’27.
After sitting through lectures and submitting homework during the day as full-time students, Salamoun and Haroon shift from the classroom to the food truck twice a week, where they begin work at 6 p.m. and head home at 3:30 a.m.
At the end of the fall semester, the truck faced a rush of business after a year of burger-selling and events — selling 300 burgers in a single night, which is double or even triple the amount they sold at the start of their career, Salamoun said.
“That [night] was cool. It showed us we had the right team and what the next steps are to get that many burgers in one night [again],” Salamoun said. “It showed us the potential of reaching 500 burgers in those hours.”
The student-run business, founded in 2023 by underclassmen entrepreneurs, adds burgers to the Collegetown nightlife scene from a bright red food truck. Business students Salamoun and Haroon flip and sell burgers in the truck beside local bars Hideaway and Level B on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. The midweek rush may catch students traveling to and from Level B for its Wednesday gallon fishbowl drink special.
The truck’s late hours serve to end their customers’ nights of partying — or studying — on a high note with good food, Salamoun said.
“[The joy of the job] is seeing people try our burgers and putting a smile on their face,” Salamoun said.
smpl Burger began from an unsatisfied burger craving. One night, co-founders Salamoun and master of engineering student Karim Pareja ’24, said they wanted a “really good burger” on campus but found themselves out of luck and out of burgers.
“‘I can make a burger,’” Salamoun recalled saying in reaction to the bind. That day, Salamoun, Pareja and their friends took matters into their own hands and flipped a batch of burgers for themselves which set smpl Burger in motion.
In November 2023, smpl Burger earned $2,000 in funding through Cornell’s Hospitality Pitch Deck Competition, where student start-ups compete for funding. They placed second out of 29 competing start-ups.
“What’s fun about [our business] is we just try things and we see whether they work or not,” Salamoun said. “It’s still pretty scrappy. It’s still a start-up. There are a lot of fun things we want to do that are yet to come.”
Haroon took a leadership role in smpl Burger after Pareja completed his undergraduate degree and stepped back from the business in Spring 2024. Pareja said he continues to love and support the “bootstrapping” business but does not participate in its everyday operations anymore.
smpl Burger’s brand and worth ethic are “spontaneous” and “ambitious,” Haroon said. In terms of the food, he said that eating the burgers may be his favorite part of the business.
“Even if we’re not [open and] selling burgers, I want a burger,” Haroon said with a laugh.
smpl Burger’s menu is simple — so simple that the brand’s name doesn’t require vowels, Salamoun said. They offer two items: burgers and fries.
The smpl Burger crew spreads the love for the American staple food around Collegetown. Along with Salamoun and Haroon manning the truck, they said that sometimes their friends and peers — from engineering students to students on the pre-med track — hang around the truck just to try flipping a burger.
The co-founders said their “goal is [to open] 100 locations in other college towns” around the United States. However, right now, with their one location in Ithaca, Salamoun said that being a part of the Cornell community is important.
“We want to be a big part of Cornell’s culture,” Salamoun said. “It would be really sick if when people think ‘Cornell,’ they automatically think ‘smpl Burger.’”