Seated at 130 E. Foster Ave. in downtown State College is Penn State’s newest student-run business. It’s a small shop with plenty of essentials for students, but you can’t walk in and buy it.

You can, however, order it on your phone. That’s the design of Handle, a student-run delivery service that opened a new location at Penn State after previous experiments at USC, Oregon, Alabama, and a handful of other schools.

Handle specializes in the most basic needs of college students. It offers everything from Red Bull and candy to tampons and Pepto Bismol.

The whole operation, from the CEO position of the company to the folks who deliver the Handle products, is run by college students. At the State College location, senior Drew Shiffler runs the business that just wrapped up its second weekend of operations.

Handle’s pitch is simple: it’s like Uber Eats or Doordash, just better. The idea, Shiffler said, came from a USC student who ordered ice cream to his residence only to find it melted before it even arrived. The time it took his driver to go to the store and get to his apartment ruined his desert. With Handle, the drivers are standing next to the produce when an order comes in, and with a tight radius of 1.5 miles for the store’s delivery zone, Handle promises its customers they’ll have their food within 15 minutes courtesy of a “Handler,” which is what Handle calls its delivery drivers, who use e-bikes to get around.

“We have our delivery drivers in the store,” Shiffer said. “An order comes in, we pack up the order, and then the Handlers take out the delivery on electric bikes.”

Since the business opened on Friday, January 26, Handle has been open from 4 p.m. until 12 a.m. seven days a week. At present, around three Handlers are manning the store, but Shiffler expects that number to increase as sales increase. The store started by recording around 50 sales its opening weekend, but Shiffler anticipates that number to increase as the brand integrates itself into the Penn State community.

Shiffler’s goal for Handle is for the store to become a staple of Penn State life. The business is running promotions with THON where it will donate $2,500 to an organization’s THON drive based on how much that organization spends at Handle before the dance marathon. Handle is also trying to become a part of Greek life, and Shiffler envisions the business logo hanging from fraternity houses in partnership with different Infraternity Council organizations.

“Obviously, we want to reach as many students as possible,” Shiffler said. “We want to integrate ourselves with the student population.”