Need your car cleaned? Skates sharpened? Maybe some greens for your salad? The students of St. Albert Catholic High might have you covered — for a price.
St. Albert residents may start seeing flyers in their mailboxes in the coming weeks advertising new businesses run by St. Albert Catholic High students.
SACHS teacher Neil Korotash said those businesses are ventures launched by his Business class students. Two years ago, when he started teaching the class, he decided to make it more engaging by having students create and operate their own companies. Unlike the one-week, in-school only ventures Business students might have run in junior high, these companies would market to the general public and could continue beyond high school.
“We’ve got 50 students working in 17 different businesses,” Korotash said, ranging from shovelling snow to growing basil for sale in restaurants, with some applying for business licenses and setting up bank accounts.
“These are for-profit businesses,” he added, with students keeping any money they make from them.
Young tycoons
Business student Noah Foster said he and the six others in his group had started a business selling The St. Albert Box.
“It’s a box with around 11 products from around St. Albert and Sturgeon County,” he explained, and it aims to promote local companies during the Christmas season.
Foster said the team reached out to area businesses to find partners and determine which items were the best fit for the gift boxes. About 11 companies signed on, including Deb’s Greenhouse, Endeavour Brewery, and Untamed Feast. The team was now assembling the boxes and developing a promotional campaign for them, with the aim to sell about 50 boxes for about $75 each through social media, realtors, a website, and the upcoming SACHS Christmas Craft Fair on Dec. 2.
Foster said he’s had fun with this project reaching out to partners and developing branding, and hoped to keep the St. Albert Box going after this semester.
“It can help you learn a lot of life skills,” he said of starting a business, and also lets you earn money while doing something you enjoy.
Student Claire Hoffmann has turned her hobby making clay jewelry (typically tiny food items) into an online store called Claire’s Crafts.
“I’ve been making them since I was 14, but I haven’t actually considered having a business until recently,” Hoffman said.
Hoffmann said she’s learned much about packaging and payment methods through this class project and hoped to sell at least five charms through her store. If sales take off, she hoped to keep Claire’s Crafts going as a side-business in the years ahead.
Student Nixon Chanski and the rest of SACHS Car Detail were scrubbing, polishing, and vacuuming a white SUV in the school’s parking lot. It was their company’s first car, and it was an impressive mess, with various containers, sunflower seeds, and a mouldy cucumber littered about its interior.
Chanski said he and his associates previously ran a successful skate-sharpening outfit as part of Korotash’s class but decided to switch tracks to something with better growth prospects. They were now offering car-cleaning services to drivers at the school for $50 per car, and hoped to clean one car a week.
“You can drive your car in the morning and leave school with a nice, clean car.”
Questions on the Business class should go to Korotash at [email protected].
