Jim Singer stands in his new restaurant on Green Street as University of Illinois students file in to try his Chicago-style hot dogs.

“My family and I have been (attending U of I) for a long time, and we thought it would be a great place to start up a Chicago-style sandwich shop,” Singer said.

On this past Father’s Day, Singer, his wife Christie and daughter Ashlee McCarter opened up their new restaurant, The Beef Stand, located at 611 E. Green St. Their restaurant sells classic Chicago-style foods including Italian beef, hot dogs, polish sausage, corned beef and pastrami.

The Singer family has their own catering company that caters events for fraternities on campus, but they wanted to expand their business, Singer said.

“We wanted to have a campus presence, and we fell in love with the location on Green Street,” said Singer.

Singer’s goals for his restaurant are to have friendly and fast service, and to eventually expand to other Big Ten schools in hopes that the students from Chicago will find continuity at the schools and a familiar thread from their Chicago home, he said.

Also new on Green Street is the Modern Nails II salon, started by Michael Nguyen, owner of Modern Nails which is located in southwest Champaign.

“Both students and locals are frequent customers at Modern Nails, but I wanted to start a new store closer to the students because they like coming to the store even though it is far away,” Nguyen said.

After working for others for a long time, Nguyen said he decided to go out on his own and start his own salon, Modern Nails. Now that this store is settled, it is time to get another one off the ground, he said.

“The design of this salon will be upgraded and newer looking,” Nguyen said. “The original prices will be the same, but there will be university coupons just for the salon on campus.”

Nguyen hopes to open the salon around Sept. 7, if everything in the contract works out.

Once students have eaten a Chicago-style hot dog and have gotten their nails done, they can walk over to Casablanca, a Moroccan-style restaurant that will serve a variety of kinds of kebabs, said Hari Khanal, co-owner of the restaurant. Khanal and his brother Kishan Sharma own both Casablanca and Bombay Indian Grill.

“My brother and I were sitting around one day and just came up with the idea to open a kebab house because there isn’t any other one on campus,” Khanal said.

The brothers picked the popular Green Street location because there is always a lot of foot traffic, which hopefully means lots of customers will be wanting to try out their new restaurant, Khanal said.

“A lot of the restaurants here are fine dining, but this place is more about getting good food fast because we know college students are really busy,” Khanal said. “We have a different variety of food and the prices are very low.”

Casablanca and The Beef Stand further cater to the needs of college students by having late hours. The Beef Stand has already opened for business and Casablanca and Modern Nails II will be open in the near future.