Having a student business has SO MANY benefits. Depending on what your product or service is, you have the opportunity to practice independence, money math, cooking, responsibility, and so much more! In this series, various guest bloggers (teachers & special educators) will share their tried and true experience of starting and running a student business for special education students. Hopefully, these posts will give you some great ideas or inspire you to start a classroom business of your own to teach students valuable vocational & life skills! Up next is a classroom fruit crushing juice business!
About The Guest Blogger:
Heather is a full time special education teacher and transition facilitator at a transition program in Illinois and a part time TeachersPayTeachers author and blogger on her website- aloveforspeciallearning.com. She has been a special education teacher for 15 years and has Bachelor’s degrees in Elementary education and Special education, and Master’s degrees in Special Education (multiple disabilities and assistive technology) and Assistive Technology.
How The Business Started:
I was visiting my grandfather last summer and as I was walking out of his garage back to my car I saw his can crusher on the wall. He’s been crushing his aluminum cans (and saving the tops) for as long as I can remember. It was then that I thought, ‘I could teach my students how to crush a can!’ and boom, the crushing student business was born.
I teach young adults with multi-needs at the transition level and my co-teacher and I were looking for a vocational task that our students could engage in within our building, since community outings were not an option at the start of the 2020-2021 school year. With this new idea, we moved forward collecting cans from staff and a few buildings in our district, rinsing, drying, crushing, and then hauling them to the local recycling center for cash. It was a business we could plug into our schedule regardless of the time of year and it provided an array of vocational opportunities for our young adult students.
This year, we wanted to ‘scale’ the business, if you will, moving beyond just cans.
We are launching a new student business with a similar ‘crushing’ vibe. We are taking that same rote ‘crushing’ skill and applying it to fruit to make juices!
Administration:
Since our vocational volunteer options remain restricted again this year, my co-teacher and I had the full support of our department chair and vocational coordinator to continue this type of work into the new school year.
We did a test run of the idea at the end of last school year by making lemonade for staff and it was a huge success. We were receiving positive feedback from customers on the taste and delivery service for weeks.
Safety Considerations:
For safety reasons, our staff and students will be wearing gloves, aprons, and face shields/masks.
Supplies:
- Staff and young adult aprons
- Staff and young adult gloves
- Fruit crusher/juicer
- Fruit (purchased from local grocery store)
- Cup to catch juice from fruit crusher
- Large pitcher for juice before funneling into bottles
- Funnel
- Bottles and caps
- Additional caps (if reusing bottles)
- Avery tag
- Rubber bands for the tags
- Cart to wheel over to other building or load on bus
- Google Order Form (see questions below)
Student Tasks:
- Finding fruit in grocery store using visuals
- 1:1 counting of fruit into cart
- Placing fruit on conveyor belt at store
- Place fruit in crusher
- Crush the fruit to make juice
- Discard crushed fruit into garbage
- Pour juice into pitcher to mix
- Twist cap on to bottle
- Wipe down bottle after juice has been poured in
- Wrap rubber band tag around bottle top
- Put bottles on cart
- Alert customer order has arrived via AAC
- Hand over bottle to customer
- Show tag to pay via Venmo QR code when delivering (on bottle or separate larger QR code laminated sheet)
- Accept money, if customer is paying in cash
- Thank customer for their business via AAC
- Collect used bottles to be cleaned and reused
- Load/unload dishwasher to clean used bottles
As you can see, many of the tasks for this business are a take on ‘put-in’ and ‘take-out,’ which is where most of my young adults are at with their vocational skills.
Staff Supports:
- Assist with handwashing and putting on gloves/apron
- Pre-cut fruit (1 cut down the middle)
- Monitor crushing (for safety)
- Funnel juice into containers
- Collect online orders from Google Form
- Fill out order on tag
- Load up cart on to bus for delivery
- Count and handle cash payments
Cost:
Our business will run 2 days per week all year round because we are able to source our key supplies from the local grocery store and Amazon. The cost per bottle of juice will be determined after our first launch, but we anticipate it to be about $2-4 per bottle.
We will be accepting cash and are working to set-up electronic payment, via Venmo. We anticipate that sales will increase if staff are able to pay electronically, which is a win-win for everyone!
How customers order:
Thinking with a business hat on, my co-teacher and I worked to make ordering quick and easy for staff as we anticipate this will convert to having consistent orders. The Avery Tags will have the staff member’s order and QR to order again via Google Form on 1 side and a QR code to pay electronically on the other side
Orders will be placed on a Google Form with the additional following questions:
- Drink order (juice or lemonade, delivery date)
- 1 time order or repeating weekly delivery
- The room the staff wants it delivered to
- If they want the order left at their desk if they aren’t around or brought to where they are
- Pay cash or via Venmo
Staff & Student Time Commitment:
Our offerings will include: fresh squeezed orange juice 1 day per week and fresh squeezed lemonade another day per week. We are limiting who we are selling to (school district staff in our building and across the street) so we won’t need kitchen permits or food certifications. This controlled audience will also allow us to keep the business small enough to manage for our class.
Money earned:
The money earned will be used to buy supplies as we aren’t looking for large profit margins. If we have enough profits after a few months, then we may plan to purchase high interest preferred goods for each of our young adults (such as ice cream, pizza, community activity, etc).
While this business wasn’t created to directly support specific IEP goals, data can be taken on tasks such as AAC communication with unfamiliar people, time on task, dressing (gloves and apron), and handwashing.
All too often young adults such as those in our program are not considered for vocational placements because of the high level of support they need. However, this juice business provides an array of tasks that are right at their level. I love that our young adults will get to engage in meaningful vocational skills that go beyond a task box in a classroom, they will get to sell goods they played a part in creating, and they will get to utilize these skills outside school time.*
I’m thankful for my grandpa’s decades-long dedication to recycling because it sparked an idea that turned into a student business for my young adults.
*Since starting the can crushing business last year, our vocational coordinator found a local business that sells beverages in aluminum cans and is willing to let our young adults volunteer on site crushing the cans and recycle what they crush for cash.
Thanks for reading!
Heather from A Love For Special Learning
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