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, and 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 by going to each class and making announcements about your product.
- Ask the front office to use the loudspeaker 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 orders 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 it’s 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 and 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 think about starting one! Some so many benefits and opportunities can come about from running a class garden. One of them is a farmer’s 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 a 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/Treats
**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.
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.
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 lunchtime for 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!
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 pizzas you can make at once (The oven I mentioned above 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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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 lessons, class parties, 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.
Holiday Grams
This is a cute and easy idea for a student business around the holidays. A popular holiday to hand out grams is 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 by going to each classroom taking orders and collecting money, and then they can practice delivery skills on the date the grams are to be delivered.
Crafts & Handmade Items
Pinecone Succulent Craft
There’s something about handmade art/gifts that just sell without persuasion. Many people would rather purchase something 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.
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 it 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.
Upcycling
Upcycle and utilize materials that are just going to be thrown away anyway – 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 wreaths, pallet pumpkins, and seasonal cards.
Photo courtesy of Rachel McBride
Dragonflies are made of upcycled fan blades & table legs
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.
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
Thanks for reading!
