Delilah Brown, Campus Cafe Extraordinaire

Like many other students, Delilah Brown, who is a student at Harvard Extension School, just wanted a job on campus at the start of the school year. Having stumbled across the Queen’s Head Pub back in 2015 while participating in a summer pre-college program at Harvard, she indicated her interest in working there as a graduate manager. “The rest is history,” she says.

Brown quickly established herself as a “powerhouse” of management and optimization at some of Harvard’s most beloved eateries — and BoardPlus drainers — among College students.

Zach L. Tripsas, manager of the Queens Head Pub, says he offered Brown a job on the spot after a spontaneous conversation shortly after she applied to be a graduate manager. His impulse served him well: “My experience working with Delilah has just been honestly one of the greatest pleasures of my professional career,” he says.

As graduate manager, Brown was a key player in reopening the Queen’s Head Pub, turning it from a dusty storage room to a bustling social space. She introduced an app, which entirely revamped the inventory system to improve efficiency, much to the gratitude of Tripsas and the rest of the team.

“She helped us really organize and put logistics behind our kitchen,” he said. “To have someone who was confident about it and was ready to take it on — that was really brilliant. She’s game for anything.”

Natalie B. Le, a former Master’s student and bar manager at the pub, also admired Brown’s graceful problem-solving and her ability to foster a productive yet energizing work environment, in addition to the advancements she’s made to “astronomically” improve workflow. “We pretty much call her the mother of the Queen’s Head Pub. She just has this loving nature about her,” Le says. “She's just so welcoming, and she's just so easy to talk to. She's just so fun to work with.”

Brown has since transitioned to her role as assistant manager of both Barker and Lamont Cafes, and she can be thanked for putting an end to students’ lonesome glances at the empty coffee bars. Now up and running for the 2023-2024 school year, featuring a menu of fresh pastries and brewed drinks, the cafes have restored their lively student audience and are accompanied by Beyoncé, Whitney Houston, or whoever’s on queue on Brown’s go-to playlist.

“Music was something that was very important in my household growing up,” Brown reflects. As the baby of a large family, she grew up with multiple decades of music, all the way back to the 1920s. To this day, she is constantly exploring new music tastes and genres and hopes to use music to create the ambiance that students need.

In addition to all the hats she currently wears, Brown’s schedule is jam-packed. A typical day starts with her waking up at 4 a.m. Her morning is spent exercising and listening to TED Talks and podcasts. Once the afternoon hits, she’s making her rounds at the cafes, checking in with student employees and completing paperwork — and again at dinnertime. There are some gym days in between and horseback riding every other Sunday.

When asked how she stays motivated, she replies, “I think by living in my purpose and having passion for what I do.” Impact matters a lot to her. “Knowing that I get up every single day and the decisions I make with a department or team or the people I’m around, and knowing that that’s impacting students and helping students develop in various ways — I find that to be motivating,” she says.

Looking ahead, Smitha Haneef, the Managing Director at Harvard University Dining Services, hopes that these cafes can be easy, flexible, and open spaces “for students to come and have a cup of tea and a cookie.” With a menu that aims to be simple and accessible, the cafes are a “way of sharing [their] affection and love.”

Crista Martin, the Director for Strategic Initiatives and Communications at Harvard University Dining Services, believes that the other part is creating a space for the team. “You want it to be a space where they’re feeling happy to be there, and the music is motivating them to brew another great latte and really just sort of release a little bit of their stress as they’re just having a great few hours being in the moment,” she says.

“My vision and my goal is making sure that the students are set up for success,” Brown says. She wants to make sure that people are communicating with “their community and making connections and networking through coffee, music, and cafe culture. And also allowing students to have a little bit of autonomy of the space and allowing them also to make decisions on what that culture would look like.”

These places would not be complete without “Delilah’s smile, which is infectious, it just lights up the space,” says Haneef. “Spacemaking and placemaking has been important to us, and she’s just been amazing in weaving those subtle things.”

—Magazine writer Chelsie Lim can be reached at chelsie.lim@thecrimson.com.