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 that delivers Halloween candy to classrooms!
About the Guest Blogger:
Welcome to the Halloween Candy Delivery service! I’m Laine Shields, and I’m a Transition Specialist at a public high school in the Greater Boston area. I teach and provide transition services to a classroom of 18-22 year olds with a wide range of needs. I am neurodivergent, so I relate to my students in a lot of ways! We have fun every October taking orders from staff members around the school, who would like for us to purchase and deliver their Halloween Candy!
How We Began:
One of my students LOVES making deliveries and social visits to the high school administrative staff, former teachers, and other folks around the building. He also expects to be on the receiving end of a candy bowl when he visits certain offices. But one day, there was no candy left in the bowl of his favorite office. Heartbroken, he asked me. . . why wouldn’t they have candy there today? This led to a discussion about restocking supplies & perhaps offering this service to others, who may be very busy. My student’s eyes lit up. What about helping buy candy in time for halloween? From there, the business was born!
Admin/Safety Concerns:
Our admin allows us a lot of flexibility and autonomy, and they were thrilled with the idea. (They would also be ordering candy, themselves, after all.) We did not have any safety concerns, other than our usual community safety practice we go over with students before we travel in the community.
IEP Goals:
- Upon sending out our flyer (find it free, here) to teachers around the high school every year in early October, I assign jobs to different students in my class, depending on their interest and IEP goals. For each three orders we receive, I have students assist with the following tasks:
- Job #1 = Create Order Forms
- Job #2 = Purchase candy
- Job #3 = Send Invoice
- Job #4 = Collect Payment
- Job #5 = Deliver Candy
- Students focus on their individual IEP goals, including functional reading and writing (order forms, invoices, etc.), fine motor (cutting order forms), matching information (order forms → receipts → invoices → master list), technology skills (google form, online candy research, emailing teachers), creating a shopping list, comparative price shopping, shopping within a budget, identifying sales prices, making purchases in the community, completing to-do-lists, making change, and social skills/customer service!
- Every student is able to participate in a meaningful way!
Time Commitment:
This does not take very much time to do, other than the shopping & delivering! The biggest key for us has been to only focus on about three orders at a time. I can then send a group of 3 students to each make a purchase for one teacher. This makes purchasing and keeping track of orders much easier! Depending on how many orders we get, we go out to make purchases and then deliver 1-3x/week.
Supplies:
One major benefit of this business is that no supplies need to be purchased in advance! Some prep is required, however. You need to create a digital / paper order form, send this out, and then create invoices once the candy is purchased. I also use a clipboard and stapler to organize order forms and invoices. We clear a space on a table to collect all the orders.
Marketing:
Every year in late September, we send an advertisement flyer (find it free, here) to teachers around the school. We print some out on orange paper to hand deliver, and email everyone else! Our first year, we only gave out flyers to 15 people, so that we did not get overwhelmed with too many orders. We’ve grown our invite list each year, and now confidently send our order form out to the entire school staff! Not everyone responds, of course, so we end up with about 30-50 orders each fall.
Pricing:
At my school, I pre-pay for the candy myself, then get reimbursed as we collect payment from each teacher. We collect payment AFTER purchase (so we have an exact amount) by sending an invoice. We don’t charge a delivery fee, but rather include a line about “working for tips.” Every single person who uses the service tips the students, and this money goes directly to each student!
Once payment is received, the students go make their candy delivery. I collect all the tips weekly, then the students who helped out that week receive their payment!
Other Tips:
- It’s important to keep payment info, invoices & receipts organized! We like to keep each candy purchase in an individual bag, and then staple all information directly to the bag.
- Make sure that your google form/order form includes all essential information! You need to know what types of candy each person wants, how they plan to pay, where to deliver, and much more!
- My students get VERY excited about this annual student business! Build the hype in September, and the students will be volunteering to help with certain tasks. Student buy-in is most important of all!
Thanks for reading!
LAINE – Transition Abilities
