Oct. 29, 2026
Long before Adam Guy, BA ’07, was helping improve the game-day concessions inside Memorial Stadium at the University of Missouri, he was figuring out how to sell lemonade to the fans traveling there.
Guy grew up near the stadium, and at the age of 5, he set up a lemonade stand on Mizzou game days and treated it like an entrepreneurial laboratory. He moved his stand to higher traffic spots, adjusted prices based on demand and studied what worked and what didn’t. With every game, he looked for ways to make the next one better.
Today, Guy is back serving fans at Memorial Stadium — and he’s stepped up his game.
As CEO and owner of Columbia-based Upper Crust Food Service, Guy has forged a multiyear partnership with Mizzou Athletics and Sodexo Live! to elevate game-day hospitality with customized menus and expanded dining options. The collaboration combines Upper Crust’s community connections with Sodexo Live!’s hospitality expertise, bringing Columbia favorites such as Shakespeare’s Pizza, Buck’s Ice Cream, Champ’s Chicken and Mya’s Gourmet Popcorn to stadium concessions.
For this homegrown Tiger, who also spent two years as a walk-on with Mizzou basketball, the partnership is personal. His time in the classroom and on the court helped shape the discipline and leadership he brings to his business today.
“The University of Missouri has had a huge impact on my growth as an individual,” he said.
The partnership also comes as Mizzou Athletics invests in the future of the fan experience. A $250 million renovation of Memorial Stadium, completed in time for its 100th anniversary season in 2026, ushers in a new era for the historic home of Mizzou football, where Guy’s entrepreneurial journey began.
The heart of an innovator
At Mizzou, Guy built businesses while earning his communication degree from the College of Arts and Science. He brought experience from an earlier venture, a professional magic show he created and toured throughout the Midwest, including performances at the Missouri Theatre. That experience taught him how to market an idea, attract an audience and turn a vision into a business.
Guy launched his first Mizzou venture from his fraternity bedroom: a silicone wristband business. When Mizzou faced Kansas in basketball, he recruited fraternity brothers to distribute fliers in the parking lot, directing fans to his website.
“When I woke up the next morning, my student email, which was tied to my PayPal account, had 7,000 new emails,” Guy said. “Every one of them was an order from a Tiger fan for one of my wristbands.”
Demand quickly outgrew his bedroom operation. Guy partnered with a factory in China that shifted its production to wristbands, helping him eventually sell tens of millions worldwide.
While still at Mizzou, Guy entered the downtown restaurant business at the invitation of a family friend. He started by managing a Cold Stone Creamery franchise, learning firsthand the demands of restaurant operations. Before graduating, he had moved on to acquire Upper Crust Bakery, Café and Catering.
“The restaurant business is a humbling business,” Guy said. “You can put your very best effort into something and still fall short. But there’s tremendous joy in creating connections and memorable experiences for others.”
Guy also brought his business experience into the classroom. Professors invited him to share lessons from his ventures, connecting what he studied with the daily challenges of managing employees, working with customers and growing a company.
“I’d talk about things like how to communicate well, how to deal with employees, how to deal with customers,” Guy said. “It was a neat experience to have a real-life experience going on alongside my educational experience.”
What matters most
Guy has since stepped away from most of his businesses to focus on leading Upper Crust Food Service. The company’s first clients were close to home: Mizzou and a fraternity and sorority near campus. Over the past 15 years, that foothold has grown into a national business serving fraternities and sororities, small colleges and private elementary schools across the country. It is now the nation’s largest provider of food services to fraternity and sorority chapters and summer camp programs.
Upper Crust employs nearly 2,500 people and serves more than 750 accounts. For Guy, that growth has created an opportunity to focus on something beyond the bottom line.
“I’ve been fortunate to build a business that has reached a scale where I’m no longer worried about whether we’ll be in business tomorrow,” Guy said. “Now I can focus on the impact our business can have on the communities we serve and on the people who work here. That’s what motivates me most today.”
Early in his entrepreneurial journey, Guy kept a thermometer on his whiteboard. Along the side, he wrote “amount of sales,” filling it in each year with one goal: reach the top and bust through it. Since then, the measure of his success has changed to the impact he makes on his employees, community and clients.
“I think there is such a direct correlation to that lemonade stand experience to what I’m doing today,” Guy said. “I started as a local Columbia business, and I’ve been a Mizzou fan my entire life. To come full circle and now have the opportunity to bring local businesses and the community into the game-day experience is really special to me.”
