The Daily Grind is a "coffee" cafe in the library that serves morning snacks and hot/cold drinks to the students and staff of Belleville East between 8 am until 10 am everyday. We even have a delivery system set up to deliver drinks and snacks to classrooms. It is a wonderful way to get high school seniors the experience of starting a small business and learn what it takes to run a successful business.
What do students learn from working in The Daily Grind?
The cafe typically opens for the year around September 15 of each new school year. Are you thinking, if the school year starts in the middle of August then why do we open the cafe a month later? Great question. This is where the learning process begins for the students. Before we open, we have TONS to do such as ...
Get to know our customers...our Target Market (TM)
Decide on our vendors. Where are we going to purchase our cafe items?
Send out surveys to our primary target market (Students)
Send out surveys to our secondary target market (Staff)
Collect the surveys to analyze the results to see what our customers (TM) want us to sell
Determine prices for the products we are going to sell
Schedule students to work
Learn how to use the Square, Keurig and cappuccino machine
All this has to be done before we can open. Once we are open, the students learn to...
Communicate with customers by taking orders correctly and accurately
Communicate with co-workers to be able to work effectively and efficiently
Inventory Management. Keeping enough inventory so we don't run out of products but making sure we do not order too much that it sits around and spoils
Learn to work in fast pace atmosphere. You wouldn't believe how crazy busy we get!
Come up with creative ways to promote our menu items and cafe
Keep track of financial records to determine how much profit we made...hopefully not a loss :(
Who runs The Daily Grind?
The students who run The Daily Grind are seniors in the CTE Co-op Program. Co-op students typically work the cafe once every 2 weeks so they are not working all the time although many co-op students want to. The cafe work schedules are create by each student so they are able to work with friends. Since we open the cafe at 8 am every morning, workers must be in the cafe no later than 7:45 am to get the cafe ready to open by that time... got to make the coffee!