How do most Kids Rank projects and activities start, with a pieces of ideas that eventually come together! One of our parents came to us and said "I have this awesome company that will take a cookie recipe and produce it in quantity!" Earlier that summer I had been wanting to introduce financial literacy as a concept and had been researching entrepreneurism as a way to make it more exciting for the kids. We were about to pilot our first Kids Rank summer camp for 6th-9th graders and thought this could be a perfect fit! On the first day of camp we visited Tasty Catering in Elk Grove, IL to learn the first step in making a product reality.
We talked with Steve, from Tasty, about ingredients, timing and cost. On that first field trip we also met Chris, who owns Level 21 a marketing and branding company, and shared ideas about packaging design and how to make a product visible in a store.
Later that week we explained to the kids that this would be a real live business and we would like anyone who wanted to participate to choose a team within the company that they felt would be interesting. Their choices were Finance, Logistics, Marketing and PR, to our surprise they split up pretty evenly. Over the next several weeks we had a cookie recipe contest and winner, we mapped out a plan for the teams and we met to talk about next steps. This has been such a learning process FOR US ALL and I am really proud of the progress that the Sweets Company has been made. Continue to follow up to learn more about our journey.