BUSINESS OF COFFEE

Soon, Franklin Community High School students will be able to grab a frothy, sweet coffee drink before class.

At their own school.

Administrators and business students are opening up Cub Cafe this year.

The coffee shop will open in an existing room across from the cafeteria and serve drinks before school and during special extracurricular periods.

The shop is being touted as a way for Business Professionals of America, a student business club, to get hands on experience doing everything involved in running a business.

Administrators are hoping having a coffee shop at the school will cut down on student tardiness because some students are consistently late to school because of coffee stops before school, assistant principal Laura Mattox said.

Students filled out a survey last year asking what the school could offer them as an incentive for good behavior or high grades.

“A lot of them said they would like a coffee shop,” she said.

Administrators imagined a coffee shop that was planned and staffed 100 percent by students. They visited a similar coffee shop at Carmel High School and got the ideas they needed to start their shop, said Mattox.

Cub Cafe was born.

Students are now working through every detail. Students in Business Professionals of America have made a full business plan detailing how their coffee shop should be ran.

They sent out surveys asking teachers and students what drinks they would want and what they would be willing to pay for their morning coffee at the school.

Now they are deciding on the details. What coffee blend they will use is being picked. Debates on whether to use coffee grounds or beans and how much a drink should cost are being determined.

They are testing recipes and getting help from students from Carmel who have adapted recipes to make them compliant to school nutrition recommendations. An upcoming coffee taste test will be done with students and teachers to decide if their recipes will be profitable.

“There is a lot more than we thought there would be,” said Emma Beavins, a sophomore business student. “It is so detail oriented.”

Students will be getting extra lessons and applying principles that they learn in their business classes, business teacher Stephanie Andrew said.

“They are starting this from scratch,” Andrew said.

Money to start up the coffee shop is coming from the school’s spirit wear store, which also is run by business students.

Profit that comes from selling the beverages will go to Business Professionals of America student accounts to help defray the costs of attending state and national competitions, Andrew said.

“We are hoping we can figure out a way to divide the profits between Business Professionals of America students,” she said.