Brewing Up a Business Plan
Scottie Joe’s will serve up coffee, learning opportunities at Highland Park High
Scottie Joe’s, a coffee bar coming to the third floor of Highland Park High School, is expected to brew up learning opportunities for students in the Moody Advanced Professional Studies (MAPS) program and the district’s 18+ program.
“It’s a good experience for both us and them,” junior Gabi Kolniak said of the 18+ program.
The coffee bar, a partnership including the MAPS program, the 18+ program, and Credit Union of Texas, is expected to open around Thanksgiving. MAPS students helped develop the business plan, and young adults in the 18+ program will staff it.
“It just kept evolving into what if we opened this coffee shop where we could give our business design and leadership students the opportunity to have a living, breathing organic case study where they could not only help launch it as an introduction to their coursework but have something that they could touch base with to look at numbers, to rethink marketing, and have a living, breathing business model that could influence their coursework throughout the year,” MAPS Director Michael Warren said.
Warren said he hopes all MAPS students will learn from the project, from business design and leadership, engineering design classes creating accent seating for the shop, to brain science and health students researching the effects of caffeine.
Students in the business design and leadership program have worked on mission statements and done market research via surveys among students and teachers to learn about the types of coffee and price points that would do best and learned about supply chain issues.
“I’ve always thought I want to do something business-related,” junior Paul Flowers said. “This kind of thing just helps you interact with all sorts of people on a scale that normally, as a student, you wouldn’t do.”
Senior Anthony Ngo said he enjoys the interactive nature of the class too.
HPISD 18+ program instructor Tyson Peterson said they’re excited about the partnership.
“We just want the kids to be more active and doing things,” Peterson said. “I think they’re all excited.”
Credit Union of Texas vice president of community engagement Desmond Bibbs said the partnership aligns with the types of projects the credit union seeks to support.
“We wanted to support them accordingly because in all of the experience that we found around trying to support children gaining access to real-life experiences, what we find is that they walk away with so much more,” Bibbs said. “We’ve seen firsthand students walking away with a higher level of confidence, being able to stand in front of large crowds and do public speaking … and building relationships, and networking.”
He said he had an opportunity to speak to the students and was impressed with their ideas for marketing.
“We’re really excited to try to help support them in that lane as well,” Bibbs said.
