The Bearden school store has been selling merchandise and snacks for the past couple of months, but it has also given students a practical retail working opportunity.
Construction for the school store was finished in December, and students were able to jump right into operations. Students currently can sell assorted snacks and merchandise during all lunch periods, and Otis Spunkmeyer cookies on Wednesdays.
The school store already holds a wealth of goods to be sold, and BLC Academy teacher Mrs. Lori Leslie expects the variety to only increase in the near future.
“It’s been cool and fun to come up with ideas and come up with the way we want things and get to be able to order the things that we want,” Mrs. Leslie said.
Bearden administration and faculty have been working closely with Knox County Schools to manage the funds properly in the store.
“It’s been a lot of work working with the district downtown as far as the money goes and working with Principal [Debbie] Sayers because there’s just a lot of moving parts and it’s not as easy as just ‘Oh, I want this in the store and I can just order it,’” Mrs. Leslie said.
Students have learned a variety of practical skills through working at the store that will translate to real life jobs. These include working with money and credit card systems, balancing cash drawers, tracking inventory, customer service, and time management.
Aside from the students working face to face with customers in the store, there are also students behind the scenes that perform jobs similar to real-world business personnel.
“We also have a couple guys that keep a spreadsheet for the finance records, and we have a marketing team that has done some school announcements and put some slides on the TV,” Mrs. Leslie said. “That’ll just grow next year as they just get more things in the store.”
BLC students and workers are being assisted by the Bearden PTSO with merchandising sales.
“They are actually the ones that purchase and sell the apparel,” Mrs. Leslie said. “The apparel part of it is actually their piece of it, and then we sell the apparel.”
In future years, Bearden BLC students taking part in a Retail Operations course will be running the store. Marketing is a prerequisite to this course, so juniors and seniors will likely be the student employees.