Invented by URI students who worked in the Rams Den, Razzbulls are a URI staple. PHOTO CREDIT: Aidan Cahill | Web Editor
The University of Rhode Island is known for many things: its Division 1 athletics, it being the state’s flagship University and its academic programs. Among the list of accolades that the University has are Razzbulls, something that many consider to be a campus essential.
Razzbulls, which are Red Bull energy drinks with flavored syrup in it, were created at the University back in 2007 by students visiting the Daily Grind, according to Jo-Anne Stephens, associate administrator of the Ram’s Den.
“We brought Red Bull into the University in 2005, when it was a new energy drink, and it only had two flavors, just the regular and the sugar-free,” Stephens said. “And we decided to sell them at the Ram’s Den because that was one of our bigger retail locations.”
During that time, the Daily Grind, which now has its own section of the library, was just a kiosk with mostly coffee and snacks, Stephens said.
Students had the option to pump syrups into their coffee, and since Red Bull only offered two flavors at the time, they started playing around with pumping syrup into their Red Bulls, according to Stephens.
While Razzbulls were born at the Daily Grind, they really took off with the opening of Hope Commons in 2007, Stephens said. Rhody Market, the dining option on the second floor of Hope which is now the home to Pizza Express, used to be a seven-day-a-week operation that served Starbucks coffee, pizza, smoothies and ice cream, according to Susan Sahagian, senior food administrator at Junius “Babe” Gertz Cafe.
With the success of the Razzbull at the Daily Grind, dining services decided to start selling them at Rhody Market, which is where students really started experimenting with the different flavor combinations, Sahagian said.
“We kind of experimented and got different types of syrup, strawberry, watermelon, tropical,” Stephens said. “And we tried to advertise that, you know, the ‘flavor of the month’ and things like that.”
Sahagian said that with each new flavor of syrup that was brought into the Rhody Market, student workers would come up with different names for the combinations, like “straw-bull” for strawberry syrup and Red Bull or “tropical-bull” for the tropical flavored syrup. However, according to her, the most popular flavor was always raspberry syrup and Red Bull, which is how the popular Razzbull was born.
Since then, Razzbulls have become a “staple” of the University, especially during midterm and final exams, Stephens said. One student even wrote “Razzbulls’” on their graduation cap a couple of years ago, Sahagian said, further proving the cultural impact that the drink has had on the URI community.
One year, there was a shortage of raspberry syrup during the time of final exams at the University, Stephens said, which resulted in a “revolt” from the student body, who said things like “how am I going to get through finals without my Razzbulls?”
Stephens and Sahaigan said that at one point, URI Dining Services was the biggest seller of Red Bull on the East Coast.
Currently, Junius “Babe” Gertz Cafe, goes through about five to ten cases of Red Bull a week from selling Razzbulls at its facility, Sahaigan said. Brookside Bistro can go through up to 30 cases a week, she said.
URI’s Corner Store sells about 75 cases of Red Bull a week, just from selling them by the can, Stephens said.
Razzbulls are one of the items that can be bought using dining dollars on students’ meal plans, Stephens said. When the meal plans switched from swipes to dining dollars at the start of the 2022-23 school year, it increased Razzbull sales by around 400%, according to Stephens.
Since Dining Services started selling Razzbulls, other local businesses have started selling them as well, like RI Guys Donuts in the Kingston Emporium and 193 Coffee House in the Memorial Union.
What makes Razzbulls so popular at URI? Stephens called it a “cult following.”
“I think that a lot of people have never tried it until they get to URI,” Stephens said. “And once they see everyone else drinking them, they get hooked on them too.”