Before I arrived for my first year at Northwestern, before I started tossing frisbees on Deering Meadow and updating my wardrobe with a plethora of purple, the only time I had ever visited Evanston was one year prior, as a naïve high school senior who didn’t even realize the Windy City sat right next to a lake — much less a great one.

Growing up, I was a complete homebody. Every summer, when my siblings eagerly scampered off to sleep away camp, I wanted nothing more than to hang around the house, shooting hoops and exploring different ventures. For a while, I didn’t foresee a timeline in which I went off to college, and when I did finally get around to doing my due diligence, my parents were convinced I’d end up at our nearby state school.

That line of thinking changed when I walked around the Lakefill on a crisp fall evening in 2016, taking it all in, the painted rocks and the stunning Chicago skyline. After living in the same New England suburb for my whole life, Northwestern represented a new opportunity, an opportunity filled with growth and exploration. One deferral and six months later, I was able to leave my comfort zone and take that chance.

After my first year of college, however, I noticed that I wasn’t living up to those standards I had set for myself. Sure, I traveled the country while competing with the frisbee team at weekend tournaments, but when I was back on campus, I felt stuck in a weekly loop, a loop filled with homework, dining halls, extracurriculars, and sleep. It was hard enough to find time to traverse Evanston, much less plan out a day and an L trip into the city.

I tried to amend this misstep during my sophomore year, though I still felt like I was coming up short. That’s why I couldn’t have been more excited for the summer of 2019, when I worked on Unplugg’d full-time in a startup accelerator on campus. Not only did I have a great opportunity ahead of me career-wise, I also had this expansive sandbox beckoning, the space to truly embrace a world-class city. Weekends were full of discovery both with friends and myself, walking for hours and taking every train from the Pink Line to Purple.

These journeys would take me to faraway worlds, some familiar, some not. And yet, one of my favorite discoveries I kept coming back to was in the backyard the entire time: a local, mom-and-pop grocery store that went by the name of D&D Finer Foods.

About two-and-a-half blocks west of Northwestern’s Technological Institute — a well-known building on campus colloquially referred to as “Tech” — and tucked right behind the Noyes Purple Line station lies a couple of small grassy fields generously referred to as Tallmadge Park.

Most summers, Tallmadge is the place to go for competitive pickup ultimate with teammates and alum in the Evanston area. Therefore, I would often make the trek to the fields from campus, touting two backpacks — one with my laptop, one with my cleats.

After a long day sitting in front of a screen and a couple hours of sweaty exercise, a 20-minute walk home and additional time spent cooking often sounded less than appealing…particularly when there were incredible homemade sandwiches right around the corner. Many a night ended with me running into D&D’s with friends, past the cashier and frozen food aisle to the deli counter in the back. Soon enough, I was returning for lunch during the workday, grabbing breakfast sandwiches from their dine-in restaurant D&D Dogs over the weekend, and shopping for groceries at the store every month.

As I quickly learned from peers, however, my revelations weren’t anything unique. D&D’s feels like the worst-kept secret among Northwestern students, upperclassmen gleefully hyping up the local spot to wide-eyed first-years, many of whom have never been in Evanston before.

The famed deli counter at the back of D&D (Photo by Nathan Graber-Lipperman)

As it turns out, some of those famed sandwiches were even designed by Wildcats, such as a fan favorite called “The Penthouse.” “[We] were doing some type of award…you know, like, if you bought a certain amount of sandwiches, you get to make your own sandwich, anything you want,” D&D’s owner Kosta Douvikas tells me. “And this kid made it and we asked him what do you want to call it? He said, ‘The Penthouse.’ From then on, it caught on...”

The sandwich is quite a unique creation. You have crisp chicken and bacon mixed with chipotle mayo and pesto, all topped off with sharp cheddar cheese, strips of red onion, and crunchy chips resting on homemade flatbread.

Douvikas admits it’s his go-to. “It’s just the flavors, you know…it hits just right. That’s the crunch of the chips, and the pesto, which adds a completely different, like…who thinks about putting pesto and chipotle together?”

The grocer describes local Wildcats as the store’s “backbone.” D&D’s caters to events such as graduation and Dillo Day, Northwestern’s annual festival-filled, unofficial welcome to summer. In talking to Kosta, though, it’s evident that the connection runs much deeper than that.

“I know students from 15, 20 years ago that are now working for Tesla or working for Amazon,” Kosta says. “It’s good to see because I saw them at their worst, you know, being students here…

“And just to see them grow up…the next generation of Americans, it’s beautiful to see these kids when they come around. They always come to see me or my father, and greet us with hugs, and kisses. It’s really great.”

Sitting in his back office, past the craft beer aisle and famed deli counter, I talk to Kosta through masks and six feet of separation about the origins of his family-run grocery store. His father, Thomas Douvikas, and his uncle, Peter Douvikas — the original D&D — first opened their doors to the Evanston community in 1973.

“My father was working for Dominick’s and all the other grocers before that…the Greeks, when they immigrated here back in the early 1900s, that’s all they knew how to do,” Kosta says.

Originally, the store was across the street, Kosta tells me, which he barely remembers. They moved into the current shop when he was a kid, running through the aisles and “driving everybody crazy, doing more damage than good.” Him and his three brothers all grew up with the store, but Kosta is the only one who stuck with it.

“My dad was working from 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. every day, so I never got to see him growing up,” Kosta says. “He never came to any of our games, never came to any of our school events. You know, because he always had this mentality of work, work, work. So I think my mentality was…I decided to stay here, you know, just so I was around him.”

During our conversation, I can’t help but take in my surroundings, noticing how D&D’s embodies many traits shared by small businesses. It’s not just that the store partners with local breweries and bakeries, or that at the time of our conversation in late August, they’re gearing up for their third annual Oktoberfest event to engage their many loyal customers. It’s also the way in which Kosta interacts with his store.

Craft beers and more line the back refrigerators of D&D (Photo by Nathan Graber-Lipperman)

When we first sit down to talk, radio hits faintly play over the speakers and sneak their way into modest back room. A graphic designer appears for a consultation, and Kosta politely asks him to wait in the front of the store for 15 minutes until our interview is done. Before he can get to that, though, an employee rushes in and interrupts our conversation, asking for help with some sort of product at the deli counter; Kosta shoos her away, but when I’m done packing up my mics and proceed to walk out the door, I turn around to see Kosta opening the glass panel and working with his employee to switch out sandwich meats.

When you stay afloat for as long as D&D’s, you learn to adapt and do it all, having your hand in every little thing. On top of that, hospitality is an essential trait that runs deep in the Douvikas clan, encapsulated in the way in which they interact with their own employees and their patrons. “My dad always had a love for groceries and hospitality,” Kosta says. “He was always the person that loved to talk to people, loved to get to know everybody.”

The aforementioned Oktoberfest is a great example of how the store’s owners engage the community. Hard drinks for the adults and fun activities for the kids abound, all centered around a thousand-pound pumpkin sourced from a guy Kosta knows in Wisconsin.

“Whoever sees that kind of thing in the ‘burbs, ya know?” Kosta says in reference to the giant pumpkin. When speaking about the origins of the festival, he tells me that it’s a great way to get new faces in the door. “The new people that come in with Evanston — it’s always recycling every six months between students and people. And now, with the apartments around here, it gives them an option to say, you know, what, D&D’s is not just this little, 7-Eleven. We have everything, we cater to almost anything…we’re a full service store and a 5,000-square-foot platform.”

At the time of our interview, Kosta was planning to still hold the event with health and safety in mind, a positive celebration that aimed to counter the isolation COVID-19 has wrought. He’s fortunate that his store is still alive and doing okay amidst the devastation felt around the country.

But it was a long, difficult road to getting to this point. For shops such as D&D’s, March was an entirely different story.

Like many towns, the coronavirus pandemic has not treated businesses in Evanston kindly, both big and small. Chains such as Barnes & Noble and Panera Bread have boarded up their doors, as well as one-of-a-kind staples like the Unicorn Caf é. Heightening that dynamic is the economic role a big-time university plays in the local community.

In July, the business magazine Inc. analyzed just how big of a financial dent Northwestern students make in the area. According to Roger Sosa, executive director of the Evanston Chamber of Commerce, this figure comes out to a staggering $350 million in annual sales.

I’ve talked to other small business owners like Tomate Fresh Kitchen’s Tania Merlos-Ruiz, who estimates that about 70% of her sales derive from Wildcats’ pockets. Tomate, a popular stop for burritos just down the block from D&D’s, isn’t alone in this revenue share; Inc. reports a similar figure among many of Merlos-Ruiz’s contemporaries.

Entrepreneurs are used to problem-solving on the run, however. Adapting to e-commerce has been a big-but-necessary pivot for stores, from Tomate — which now processes all of its contactless pickup and delivery orders through a software founded in The Garage called hngr — to bookstore Bookends and Beginnings — a favorite among Northwestern students that is focusing on a book-filled subscription box.

Again, though, it’s no easy task. After all, long-term business plans were thrown out the window in mid-March, back when students skipped town in droves.

I asked Kosta to walk me through the emotions, the thoughts running through his head when he realized just how drastically everything was about to change. “Like a dream,” he says in reference to this time period. “It was like a joke.”

He continued. “Everything is shutting down, and it’s just like, holy cow. And then the governor says we’re gonna shut down for a month, then it’s two months, three months… there were no guidelines even set up [in regards to how] to do it or what to do. It was just, like, figure it out yourself…the blind leading the blind. I had to go into overdrive and shut down the restaurant, put all of our chairs and tables away…the hardest part was getting everybody to understand what was going on.”

Unlike a lot of businesses, though, Kosta started planning for the worst way ahead of time. When he first heard about COVID-19 in January, he stocked up on paper towels, toilet paper, canned food, and pasta, even as his family laughed at him, calling him crazy. And yet even he couldn’t prepare for what was to come.

“Face Mask Required” signs appear all over the store (Photo by Nathan Graber-Lipperman)

“When they first shut it down and people were doing panic shopping…that was the craziest two, three weeks of our lives,” Kosta says. “You know, I mean, I had to source groceries and stuff from vendors I’ve never even heard of. There were people…like the black market, let’s say, people just going around with trucks just being like, you want to buy this, you want to buy that, you know, and I’m just like, I’ll take anything because my shelves are empty.

“It was horrible, you know, and it was almost like The Walking Dead for a little bit because people are coming in, taking pictures of my toilet paper on the shelf, and all of a sudden, three hours later, it’s wiped out. And I’m like, please, people, this is for the immediate neighborhood, please don’t put it on social media. I mean, they can go to Jewel-Osco, they can go to Sam’s Club and go anywhere else, but please, I’d like to keep whatever’s in the store for us. You know, for the people that live in the neighborhood. They supported me…and they did a good job of doing that, keeping it to themselves.”

Nevertheless, while the omission of those pictures was vital, the community has supported D&D’s through the creation of a different type of online content — posting in the comment sections. When the store started scaling up their delivery services in the spring, new customers complained about the store’s prices (something that Kosta emphasizes has stayed the same for the last 20 years) on their social media pages, comparing them to that of big chains like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s.

“Some of these people that were just writing awful reviews, like, you know, are you kidding me?” Kosta exclaims, the frustration still evident as his voice picks up. “But then I didn’t even have to respond. There’s so many people in the community that just went on attack mode to be like, you’re picking on a little store that’s just a family-owned business because they don’t have the same price as Jewel. They’re essential workers, they’re employees that are picking your groceries and delivering them to your house…and you’re complaining about the price?”

It’s been a sharp learning curve for many small business owners, and Kosta has certainly felt it himself. “The community itself, the people that know us, love us. The people that don’t know us, get to love us. And then, if we do have any hiccups, that’s just the nature of the beast, you know?

“What these people were writing about us…one stupid thing could make a big difference. But yeah, just reading those reviews from other customers just made me feel so much better, that people came out to get our backs, not just the loyal customers of 20, 30, 40 years.

“So it is what it is. The mentality is to just keep plugging away.”

The story of D&D Finer Foods isn’t wholly unique in of itself. Local business full of friendly workers bets big on hospitality, and as problem after problem sneaks in through their front door, they somehow manage to overcome their obstacles and stay afloat.

It’s a tale as old as time. And yet, I knew I wanted to tell their story because of the connection I’ve made to the place, how the store itself seems to manifest a physical connection that develops into a fruitful relationship over the course of a Northwestern student’s undergraduate career.

During that summer after my sophomore year, when I was living in an apartment for the first time in a faraway land, D&D’s helped me feel a little bit more at home. Yes, the fact that I’ve tried almost every sandwich on the menu at this point certainly influences my infatuation with the place. But the way Kosta’s staff welcomed me in with open arms — engaging conversations and recommending products in a personable manner from the first time I ever walked in — went a long way towards building my affinity towards the store and greater Evanston community.

Which is why I also think this story is particularly relevant right now. Though Northwestern draws a large percentage of its student body from Chicagoland, this school is mostly made up of transplants such as myself.

It’s easy to think that we can visit these local stores and support them at our leisure up until the point when we graduate, but what’s evident is that many of them depend on us in order to survive. Just because we move on to chase other pursuits doesn’t necessarily mean they do too.

This isn’t just a theme unique to Evanston; when students jumped ship across the country back in March, it spelled doom for many owners, accelerating the beginning of the end. These are the nooks and crannies that help to define many of our undergraduate experiences, the beloved cafes, barbers, and sandwich stops. Every college town has them. In turn, as these stalwarts influence the lives of countless kids over the years, our decisions to shop there in good faith influence not only the livelihoods of the owners, but also the enveloping neighborhoods. It’s a symbiotic relationship: they love getting to know us both as customers and people just as much as we love to purchase what they’re peddling.

That’s why I think it’s important for my peers and I to truly appreciate the impact we have on our college towns, past just economics. COVID-19 cases are rising among Northwestern staff and students — I’ve even had someone in my house connected to a positive test through contact tracing.

Kosta gave me a mask the day we met up to prepare the interview (Photo by Nathan Graber-Lipperman)

Kosta told me that over the summer, some students would wander into his store without masks on, instead opting to cover their faces by pulling their shirts over their noses. He had worked with a local printer to make custom masks for his employees, and he would throw leftover ones to these patrons in order to make his other customers feel comfortable shopping at the store.

So next time you go play beer die in someone’s backyard or hang out inside a neighbor’s house without wearing a mask, next time you neglect to get tested and then proceed to go into a store like D&D’s, remember that this is a local community you’re entering, one that has embraced you with open arms. And yet that community doesn’t revolve around solely you and your interests; the choices you make could drastically affect a lot of people, sometimes for the worse.

Kosta says that he’s been spraying down and disinfecting “everything we could possibly find” since the early days of the pandemic. He even bought a fancy new air filter that supposedly kills 99.9% of airborne viruses and installed it in the store. According to Kosta, even if it cost him “an arm and a leg,” the investment was worthwhile if it can keep his customers and employees safe.

As we wrap up the conversation, we both agree that the future is full of uncharted waters, and it’ll be up to entrepreneurs like Kosta to take on these new problems head on. As I’m packing up my mics, he asks me a follow-up to my original question: what’s my favorite sandwich on their menu?

I stop to think about it before replying. Probably the Al Forno, but in truth, they’re all really good. I explain that I’m on a quest to finish them all anyway, and I’m sure I’ll be back soon enough to try out a new one someday. And when I do come back, I promise to stop and say hello to Kosta as he runs around the store, keeping the ship afloat.

Or, in his words, plugging away, like only he knows how.

For more on our collaboration with Kosta and D&D’s, click here to listen to our podcast and shop the collection.

College, Community, and Coronavirus: One Mom-and-Pop Stop Navigates Uncharted Waters

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