The Campus Area’s Everything Store

MacTaggart’s has everything an undergrad would need. Photos: Taylor Wolfram

Saturday mornings are busy on the lower floor of the apartment building at 230 W. Lakelawn Place, especially when there’s a home football game. Half a flight of steps down from street level, you’ll find the staff at MacTaggart’s Market furiously cooking up eggs, bacon, and sausage for breakfast sandwiches that will fuel students until kickoff.

MacTaggart’s employees Theo Koehler x’30 and Oscar Gara x’29 wait behind the counter to take orders from hungry patrons. Taylor Wolfram

Tim Taggart founded MacTaggart’s in 1985 as a small grocery store to serve the student-heavy Langdon Street neighborhood. When he named the shop, he wanted to honor his Scottish heritage, so he added “Mac” to his own name. But most students prefer to drop it — and to cut his final syllable for good measure.

“Everybody calls it Tagg’s,” says current owner Rick Schober. He and his husband, Ken Kaiser x’91, bought MacTaggart’s in 1991, and Schober has run it ever since, the business evolving with a changing campus.

“Prior to COVID, we were mostly a grocery store with a deli counter,” Schober says. “We’d do breakfast sandwiches from midnight to 3 on Fridays and Saturdays. But then COVID came and things got really weird for a while. Over the last five years or so, I’d say we’re becoming mostly known as a sandwich shop with a grocery attached.”

In the fall, the sandwich counter does a brisk business with its breakfast sandwiches, but Schober takes pride in the role he plays for generations of students.

“The draw is our food, and we put out a good product,” he says. “But playing cards, laundry soap, paper towels, miscellaneous groceries, beer — we have everything an undergrad would need. And if we don’t have it, then we’ll pick it up and stock it.”

Published in the Winter 2026 issue