School Based Business or Store.

  The business teacher at school is new but brings with her a plan.  She went to Donors choice to get the funding for equipment to cook hamburgers and fries so one of her classes could learn to run a business.

The idea is for all the students in that class to obtain their food handlers licenses to prepare them for jobs after school.

In addition, they have to figure out much meat, buns, fries, sliced cheese, and condiments to order for an event.  This means, they are using math when they fill out the purchase order because everything has to be ordered in from Anchorage and shipping can be quite expensive because it is air freighted.

Another thing they end up doing mathematically is calculating the amount they can sell the hamburgers and fries for so they make a profit and so people will buy their product.  Its a fine line sometimes because if the price is too high, they may not sell everything and loose money.

Out here a good hamburger can go for $25.00 with fries costing $5.00 for some but the school isn't charging that amount because they feel they can still make a decent profit without going that high.

Furthermore, we have a concession stand to sell things like soda, chips, and candy to  people at various activities, sports games, etc.  The senior class has it during the first semester while the juniors take over for the second semester.  Students usually sit down with the local Span Alaska catalogue to buy things by the case.

Span Alaska is a company who has been selling case lots and individual cans via catalogue in Alaska since 1972.  The price they quote usually includes the shipping already tacked on but if it requires special handling or is frozen, shipping is added on. 

Students order soda, gatorade, candy, chips, and other goodies to sell in the concession stand.  Since the price includes shipping, they know what the total cost is for the purchases so its easy to determine the cost they paid for each item.  Based on this, they can figure out how much of a mark-up for the selling price but they also have to keep track of how much the item sells at the local stores.  If they are too much out of line with the rest of town, many people will pop over to the store to buy things.

The idea is that students use this as a fund raising activity for their last year in preparation for graduation.  If the class has earned enough money over the four years, they might take a trip to Hawaii or to California.  Its a great experience because they have to determine how much it will cost to fly to a certain destination, rent cars, rent hotels, include spending money, etc.  In other words they have to create a budget and a goal.

Although both projects require a lot of work, it gives students a great experience in real life application of math, especially math geared for running a business. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great weekend.