In fall 2013, a senior at Binghamton University experimented with different recipes for chicken over rice until he found the right one. Three years later, Chick-N-Bap has become one of the most popular destinations for students to get food on campus.

Sung Kim graduated from BU in 2014 with a degree in business administration. Kim said he got the idea after a night out in Downtown Binghamton left him and a few friends craving something similar to the chicken-over-rice dishes they often enjoyed at home in New York City.

The next day, Kim went out and bought all the ingredients for what would become his chicken-over-rice dishes, spending his free time for over a week experimenting with multiple recipes before attaining the taste he wanted.

“I went out and got the ingredients from Wal-Mart,” Kim said. “I was broke, this was all of my savings and thank God I got it down. I started taste-testing with my housemates and they kept telling me they would definitely buy the food.”

Realizing he had a potential success on his hands, Kim put together a business proposal and approached BU President Harvey Stenger after he gave a presentation in one of Kim’s School of Management classes. Stenger said he liked the pitch and emailed Kim back the next day. Stenger then put Kim in contact with Sodexo, who agreed to let him sell his chicken over rice in Hinman Nite Owl.

“How we began was almost like a trial, just a way for the school to support the students,” Kim said. “A way to get the students involved with business and food.”

The first weekend Chick-N-Bap was open, Kim said Sodexo only expected him to sell 30 dishes. It was open Friday and Saturday night, and had to shut down service around midnight each day after he ran out of ingredients due to high demand. By the end of the weekend, Kim had sold 600 dishes.

After his initial success, Kim was allowed to keep his location in Hinman Nite Owl for the next two semesters, steadily increasing sales. By spring 2015, he and Sodexo moved the operation to the Marketplace for Thursday, Friday and Saturday each week to help supplement the struggling Wholly Habaneros.

Once located in the Marketplace, Kim’s business continued to thrive, at its peak selling over 1,800 dishes each weekend. With this growth, Sodexo had to reevaluate their agreement with Kim, as their original agreement left them with many of the operating costs while Kim was pulling in large profits.

Jim Ruoff, the Sodexo resident district manager for BU dining services, was part of the group that helped arrange Chick-N-Bap’s change in location as well as reconfigure their agreement. They reached a deal similar to that of other vendors like Tully’s and Moghul, in which Kim covers overhead costs, staffs Chick-N-Bap with BU students and pays Sodexo a percentage of the profits he makes.

“Sung was too successful,” Ruoff wrote in an email. “A relationship that was based on a handshake, transparency and mutual respect became too big and it needed to be formalized into a contract with more concrete terms for both parties.”

Chick-N-Bap now operates six days a week in the Marketplace. Sung currently lives in Binghamton full time and is working out a distinct business model for Chick-N-Bap so it can be managed even when he is not around. For students such as Sam Anderson, a sophomore majoring in art, Chick-N-Bap has become a staple at BU.

“I think the food’s good, the best in the Marketplace,” Anderson said. “I eat here, like, once a day.”