Having a student business has SO MANY benefits. Depending on what your product is, you have the opportunity to practice independence, money math, cooking, responsibility, and so much more! For classrooms that do not have to focus on academics as much, this is the perfect place to start! You can make it something as small as a once a year event if your class is unable to take too much time off for the business. Or, you can make it a daily business! The possibilities are endless, and it really just depends on what resources you have access to, and what your students are interested in doing!
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Getting started with a student business
- Show students ideas, see if they have any unique ideas as well. This will be their business, the more interested in the product they are, the more successful creating this business will be!
- Ask your administration for permission (your administration might want to see what your “student business plan” is first, so make sure you have it somewhat planned out). There may be certain regulations that will prevent you from making or selling certain things.
- Setting up guidelines & safety rules, hours of operation, job tasks, price (money math) and calculating potential profit.
- Supplies (try and get donations if possible), or utilize bulk or dollar stores
Marketing your student business or product
- Hand paint/draw/make posters & flyers. If your students are handy enough to make materials on the computer, that’s awesome too!
- Work on social skills going to each class making announcements about your product.
- Ask the front office to use the loud speaker to make an announcement.
- Help your students on making a spreadsheet to take pre-orders or track orders as paid or unpaid. Keep track of your customers, what room they are in, how many order they want, if they still owe money…etc.
- Work on social skills again to go to each class taking pre-orders to prevent overstock and build interest in the product or selling event coming up.
Student business ideas
The fun and educational part of this whole process is setting up the business and marketing the business with your students. They are technically the creators of this business, so it would be in your best interest to help them create something unique and one of a kind from beginning to end. Whether its finding pictures on the internet, making a flyer or spreadsheet, or painting a poster, these are all perfect hands on learning moments.
Your student business does not have to involve money/profit, although there are more life skills educational opportunities when you are dealing with money. It can simply be to just practice vocational skills or volunteer. I will go over some ideas below for a student business where the focus is not on profit.
Farmers Market or Flower Shop
If your school or classroom doesn’t already have a garden, you should totally think about starting one! There are so many benefits and opportunities that can come about from running a class garden. One of them being a farmers market business! Depending on what you plant and how big your garden is, your farmers market business will not be a daily business.
This is perfect for classrooms that do not have the time to manage a business on the daily. Rather, they can concentrate on the business more as special events when a harvest is ready. One idea for a special event could be pumpkins in October. Many staff or classrooms may be doing activities that need pumpkins during that time of year. In addition to selling fruits and vegetables that you grow in your garden, you can also grow flowers for a flower business. Perfect for special events such as Mother’s day.
Food – Snack, Lunch, or bring home
**ALWAYS MAKE SURE TO RUN YOUR BUSINESS PLANS BY WITH YOUR ADMINISTRATION. SOME SCHOOLS DON’T ALLOW THINGS TO BE SOLD TO STUDENTS OR ANYONE (ESPECIALLY FOOD ITEMS DUE TO FOOD REGULATIONS), SOMETIMES IT MAY HAVE TO BE BEFORE OR AFTER SCHOOL – EVERY SCHOOL IS DIFFERENT.
Here’s a business that has so many possibilities! You’re going to want to pick something that is inexpensive and easy to make in bulk. Adding on to the reasons why you should have a classroom garden, you can make awesome recipes from the fruits & vegetables you harvest. One of the easiest and cheapest (if you don’t have a garden) recipes to make is salsa! Making salsa can be as easy as throwing the ingredients into a blender. Here are 25+ Homemade Salsa Recipes by The Free Range Life.
There are tons of recipes out there on the internet. Whatever you choose to plant in your garden, Pinterest those ingredients and you will be sure to find something fun and easy to make and sell. Some easy recipes you can get started with are soups, cupcakes, puddings, walking taco, corn on the cob, lemonade, cookies…etc!
Dry Mixes…
Here’s an idea shared by @anfarrington on instagram. Ashley said her classroom made dry mixes of cookie mix, detergent, soups and spice blends. This is a great way to incorporate measuring and mixing skills. These would be easy to sell in zip loc baggies or recycled jars that you are able to collect through donations. Heres Mix Recipes in 31 Easy Categories by Budget 101.
Juices, Smoothies, Slushies…
This was the perfect item to sell as a student business (Agua Frescas) during ESY. We took pre-orders and delivered drinks to classrooms, and then we set up a booth at snack and lunch time during a few days. It was a huge success and we ended up making about $300 profit from just a few days of work. We used plastic cups with lids and straws, which made it easier for delivery. Another spin off of this idea would be to make smoothies or slushies!
Click here to read about an ESY Slushie business!
Click here to read about this fruit juice business!
Pizza, Sandwiches, Baked Goods…
Our school cafeteria oven gets backed up with many other classrooms using it, so I decided to get my own mini version and I absolutely love it! I ordered a convection oven with a dedicated pizza drawer in it so that my students could cook a variety of items in the classroom. Making pizzas is pretty easy (if you aren’t making ingredients from scratch).
- I found pizza pans, pizza cutter, and over-sized spatula at the Dollar Tree.
- You can get pre-made pizza crusts, a jar of pizza or marinara sauce, mozzarella cheese, and optional toppings at most grocery stores.
- If you plan on keeping the pizzas warm and delivering them, you can get a set of 50 plain pizza boxes on Amazon.
There are many opportunities to decorate the boxes with a logo or art of some sort. I would suggest limiting pizza sales to staff and classrooms that way delivery isn’t far and the pizza stays warm. Depending on how many pizza you can make at once (The oven I mentioned aboved makes one every 12 minutes), you may have to set up your business to only take one classroom order per day, or only on Fridays…etc. If you only make it a weekly or monthly event, it would be fun to have a “Friday Pizza Slice Sale” and set up a booth.
Click here to read about a bread bakery business!
Click here to read about a fresh baked cookie business!
Restaurant/Cafe
Photo courtesy of Sue Hurley Herring
We plan a staff lunch in our classroom once a month. We transform the room into the Wonderful Wednesday Cafe! We usually make one sandwich or pasta, 2 soups, 1 salad and a dessert.
This idea is definitely next level! Make sure to get permission from your administration on food regulations before diving into this idea. On the other hand, you can also pick up food orders from a restaurant and serve those items.
Food Ideas That Don’t Require Too Much Cooking
If you get a popcorn maker, you can make a variety of flavors of popcorn! Who doesn’t love popcorn? Just add a little parmesan, caramel & salt, or chocolate just to name a few. Popcorn makers are very inexpensive, get one here!
Baked potatoes are so easy to make, especially if you don’t have a full blown kitchen to work with! All you have to do is cook on full power in the microwave for 5 minutes. Turn over, and continue to cook for 5 more minutes. When the potato is soft, remove from the microwave. To keep it warm, wrap it in foil. From there, have the students put out bowls of toppings like butter, sour cream, chives, cheese…etc. You can have the students serve it, or make it self serve!
Work Experience Reflection Worksheets
AD: DIFFERENTIATED & VISUAL vocation reflection forms for students to fill out after an on or off campus job. Students will identify where they worked, how they traveled there, what skills or tasks they work on or learned, rate their performance, rate how much they liked their experience, clock in and out, calculate how long they worked, and space for a job coach to leave additional notes.
Greeting Cards & Birthdays
Photo courtesy of Andria Baumann & Laure Ahrendt of Made With Love: Greeting Cards ♥️ from Minnesota
Such a simple and fun student business. Another spin off business from this idea is to produce birthday cards and deliver them for staff birthdays. You can easily ask human resources for a list of birthdays (my school posts them in the staff lounge). Make a copy of it each month and make personal birthday cards to deliver on the day of. Another transition classroom delivers king sized candy bars on staff birthdays. It’s a nice little gesture to brighten someone’s day, and the students can learn the gift of giving.
Photo courtesy of Andria Baumann & Laure Ahrendt of Made With Love: Greeting Cards ♥️ from Minnesota
Body Scrub
Here’s a super easy product to make! My classroom sold sugar body scrubs around the holidays and it was a hit! Many people purchased these as gifts. First, we collected empty baby food jar donations, so all we had to purchase was coconut oil, sugar, and scent extracts. Then, we added handmade gift tags which we tied with ribbon onto the jars. Next, we made circle labels and glued them to the top of the jars. We had different sized jars and sold them for $3 and $5. There were several different “flavors” and before taking orders, I had students go around with the product so that potential customers could smell the product themselves. Here are 30+ Homemade Body Scrubs by A Spectacled Owl.
Artisan Soaps
Coffee Shop/Snack Cart
This is such a successful and great idea for a student business that several teachers have written about already, so I won’t spend too much time writing about it. And it’s not just coffee, expand products to hot chocolate, tea, or a mini snack shack!
You can do this a variety of ways, take pre-orders and deliver, go around with a cart, or have a booth or snack shack. This is a great opportunity for students to socialize, take orders, inventory, handle money, and so on.
Check out this blog on starting a coffee cart:
Piñatas
Here’s a fun student business! Piñata’s are fun and easy to make, and students can have free reign on their designs. Read more about Starting a Classroom Business in a Special Education Classroom by Little Miss Kimberly Ann, her classroom made a successful piñata business! Here’s a tutorial on DIY Pinata in 30 Minutes by Pretty Little Party Shop.
Running Errands & Delivery
This one won’t be a huge money maker, but you can either do this as a volunteer student business, or charge a small fee. If your classroom is allowed to go off campus as much as possible like mine (adult transition), this is the perfect job for you. There are usually many other classrooms that would like to do cooking lessons or need something for the classroom but they are unable to go off campus without setting up a field trip. This is when your class comes in handy to run errands or make a delivery for other classrooms.
Students can practice their customer service by answering the phone or and email to take delivery requests and make a spreadsheet to keep track of requests and times. You can also have students determine where they need to go to successfully run the errand or delivery, and how they are going to get there. Any opportunity to go off campus is always a treat for my students so we always look forward to running errands for other classrooms. Here are some ideas on what types of errands to run to deliver:
- Grocery store run for cooking lesson, class party, snacks…etc.
- Recycling
- Hardware store to fix something.
- Art supplies for a craft.
- Library to return books.
- Post office to drop off pen pal letters.
- Pick up a food order.
- Pick up supplies for an assembly or special event.
Check out this Halloween Candy Delivery business!
Holiday Grams
This is a cute and easy idea for a student business around the holidays. A popular holiday to hand out grams are Valentine’s Day! You could incorporate this into many different holidays though. The easiest and cheapest option would be to do a candy gram, but I’ve seen soda grams or you could get creative and incorporate cooking skills by baking cookies or a special treat. The students can hand make tags with clever sayings, along with a “To: and From:”. Students can practice social and money skills going to each classroom taking order and collecting money, and then they can practice delivery skills on the date the grams are to be delivered. Here are The 11 Best Candy Gram Ideas by The 11 Best.
Crafts & Handmade Items
Pinecone Succulent Craft
There’s something about handmade art/gifts that just sell without persuasion. Many people would rather purchase something that was handmade, and it feels a lot more heart felt to receive something hand made. If people (especially parents), know that the money is going towards a good cause, it will be an easy sell! Here is one of the art projects I have done in my class that was very successful around Mother’s Day. Click here to read the tutorial on how to make this cute gift!
Pumpkin Craft
Here’s another craft I have personally done in my classroom that was very easy to prep, low cost, and most of my students could do individually or with little prompting. These cute festive toilet paper pumpkins were a hit! We sold them for about $3 a pumpkin, 4 for $10, and most people wanted to buy more than one.
You’ll need is toilet paper rolls (collect donations or go to a dollar store), festive fabric (get on sale or with a coupon at JoAnn’s), floral leaf stems, pipe cleaners, and construction paper or thick wooden twigs/stems. All you have to do is put the toilet paper in the center of the fabric square (the size will depend on the size and thickness of the toilet paper), and stuff all of the ends into the center of the toilet paper. Then stick the makeshift stem into the top to secure the fabric. For optional extra strength, you can use a hot glue gun to secure. That’s it!
Upcycle and utilize materials that are just going to be throw away anyways – like pallets!
This photo is courtesy of Sue Hurley Herring
We also started a Pop-Up shop this year. Staff love it! We use pallets from our school so we only have to pay for paint. We have also made ornament wreathes, pallet pumpkins, and seasonal cards.
Photo courtesy of Rachel McBride
Dragon flies are made of upcycled fan blades & table legs
Check out this beaded lanyard business! Read more about it here.
Check out this bracelet business! Read more about it here.
Check out this cloth mask business! Read more about it here.
PETS
This photo courtesy of Dawn McPhie Imbrogno of Special-Tee Pet Toys
We make dog toys out of recycled t-shirts and donated tennis balls.
Click here to check out this dog treat bakery business!
Recycling
This is one of the easiest ways to make money – many people on campus are probably drinking out of a can or bottle, all you have to do is set out a recycle bin or ask classrooms to save their recyclables and have students come by to collect them each week.
Check with your local recycle centers, some pay for batteries or electronics like computers, cellphones, printers…etc!
Charity Programs
Click here to read about a volunteer experience chairty donation program preparing and assembling snack and care packages.
Now you have Business… Incorporate Vocational Skills with student time sheets!
Here’s a great opportunity for students to practice filling in a time sheet if they are consistently working on the business. They can also fill out a time sheet for off and on campus jobs. Download the time sheets here.
Thanks for reading!
