Metro Café, the new establishment that replaced Bagel Basement in October, is quite literally catering to students. With the integration of student marketing interns Margarette Nelson ’15, Natalie Van Brunt ’16, Whitney Bren ’13 and Andrea Baer ’13, the management at Metro Café has been brainstorming and investing in ideas that would fulfill student needs and requests.

“Incorporating the marketing interns is one of the best decisions I have made,” general manager Denise Anderson said.

Bagel Basement started as a deli and was the place for Dartmouth students to go for grilled sandwiches and all-day breakfast. Anderson said she wants to preserve the history of Bagel Basement and that the best way to do that was to work with Dartmouth students.

“We don’t want to lose who we are because that’s a pretty special thing and the best way to preserve that special identity is to go to the people that make it that way,” she said.

The management and staff of Metro said they have enjoyed working with the Dartmouth community in the past and looks forward to sustaining that interaction. Though the interns have only been working since February, Anderson has already received a plethora of ideas that she would like to implement at Metro.

“The ideas just keep flowing,” Anderson said. “I really like the integration. It’s been fun for me.”

One of the ideas brought up by one of the interns is for Metro to host a midnight breakfast in the library. The first such breakfast idea will take place in Baker library on March 11 at 11:30 p.m. Metro will bring in breakfast sandwiches as well as some baked goods, specifically monkey bread, which has been a popular item recently.

“We would do that every weekend if that’s what students want,” Anderson said.

Metro Café is aiming to become more student-friendly and evolve into an easily accessible space for students to get away from campus. One way the café plans on accomplishing this mission, as suggested by interns, is to have event nights. In April, Anderson is looking to have event nights focused on baking, such as how to make cupcakes or bagels.

Additionally, interns suggested that Metro offer coupons for students to use to take their professors out for coffee.

“Sometimes it can be an awkward experience because it is unclear who is going to pay, but the coupons would make it easy for students and take away that awkwardness,” Anderson said.

The café is also entertaining the idea of staying open late on certain nights for undergraduate advisors to use the café for floor meetings as well as for students to use as a study space, Anderson said. Metro is planning on bringing in couches to encourage this vision of the café as a space for students.

“We encourage loitering,” Anderson said.

The café also wants to feature student artists, whether it be a capella groups or open mic nights. Metro’s first featured artist will be Si Jie Loo ’12, whose artwork will soon be displayed in the café.

In addition to bringing in more students, Metro wants to incorporate more locally produced items and ingredients into its menu. The new menu, which was designed by Van Brunt, works as an order sheet that customers can fill out to create their own sandwich.

“Metro is a place where we hope you can come and have fresh, local and seasonal food and is a place where you just enjoy hanging out and that maybe feels a little like home,” Anderson said.

Metro Café will be having a grand reopening during the last weekend in April.