Johns Hopkins Student Turns Sidechat Popularity Into Campus Sourdough Business

Julia Vargas, a sophomore majoring in Mathematics from Brooklyn, N.Y., turned a single Sidechat post “[this January]” into Sidechat Sourdough, a student-run business that the News‑Letter profiles as having “quickly exploded in popularity” and is now taking orders on Instagram at @sidechatsourdough, the March 6, 2026 profile by Grace Oh reports.

Vargas traces the start of her baking to quarantine: “During quarantine, since there was nothing else to do, I really got into baking cakes from scratch. But baking cakes is very hard and it's very precise, so I gave up on baking cakes after a while,” she told the News‑Letter. She said she learned sourdough through a family connection before college: “I got into cooking before college because I just wanted to make sure I knew how to cook before coming to college. I learned how to make sourdough… because my mom knows someone who makes sourdough. So whenever I'm home, we always have sourdough on hand.” At Hopkins, she said, she missed fresh bread: “[However,] when I come to college, I just don't have access to fresh sourdough. I was like, ‘I really miss it.’ So I learned how to make my own. Then, I started making it for my friends. I really had fun making sourdough; I just made a Sidechat post [this January].” The News‑Letter notes she began by asking the campus whether “$8 would be a reasonable price. [After getting] a” — the quote in the profile cuts off at that point.

Sidechat Sourdough’s menu, as shown in the profile photos credited to Julia Vargas and Zheng (James) Zhou, includes rosemary sourdough, jalapeno cheddar sourdough and pesto mozzarella sourdough, with a caption in the piece reading, “Pesto mozzarella sourdough from Sidechat Sourdough, a student-run business started through Sidechat.” The News‑Letter places the business under its “Trending” and “Weekly Rundown” sections and credits photos to “COURTESY OF JULIA VARGAS” and “COURTESY OF ZHENG (JAMES) ZHOU.”

Julia’s use of Sidechat to test demand comes as the anonymous, college-only app has become a campus fixture since rolling out on Ivy League campuses in 2022. The app asks users to verify school email addresses and allows anonymous posts that go live without prior approval, with posts capped at 255 characters plus an optional photo or link and an upvote-downvote system feeding the same set of posts to everyone on a campus, reporting by national outlets and campus surveys has detailed. Harvard’s Crimson annual senior survey, cited in reporting, found Sidechat has remained among the top four most used social sites for Harvard students for the past three years and that at least half of undergraduates are active on the app.

That same reporting cautions that Sidechat’s anonymity can amplify unfiltered speech and rapid spread of false claims. Kenneth Joseph, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University at Buffalo who studies social media, said, “This is a place where people feel comfortable saying things they might not otherwise say. It's that kind of perfect storm.” Other campus examples include live crowds gathering around viral posts and recurring comparisons to earlier anonymous platforms such as Yik Yak, which peaked in 2014 and later struggled with hate speech before reemerging.

In a campus ecosystem where anonymous posts can both stir gossip and spur entrepreneurial experiments, Vargas’s Sidechat post moved quickly from curiosity to commerce, producing flavored loaves advertised and fulfilled through Instagram under the handle @sidechatsourdough, the News‑Letter profile by Grace Oh documents.