As of last year, the school store consisted of a cramped room with barely enough space for merchandise let alone actual customers. Now, the store is located in one of the largest classrooms in the school with ample space for products and students.
This year, the school store officially moved its location to a significantly larger room. There is now enough space to keep the store properly stocked and furnished. This also solved the problem of the line of students weaving out of the store and crowding into main street. Prior to the move, the store was located on the other end of the school.
However, according to Raymond McGrath, the store advisor and a marketing, business law, and securities and investments teacher, this caused a couple of issues.
“The other [issue] was our location, we thought that we were so far away from the cafeteria that we weren’t getting the traffic that we thought we should get,” McGrath said.
For one, the noise. As flocks of students made their way to the store from the cafeteria, the amount of noise being made would distract students in nearby classrooms. The distance also made it difficult for administrators to keep track of students’ whereabouts and ensure that they weren’t out of area.
“One of the considerations was how can we keep the kids out of the hallway during third block,”
McGrath said. The new location creates a bubble of sorts that students can remain in during their lunch. This has so far solved all the aforementioned problems while seemingly making
visiting the store more convenient which is believed to attract more business and in turn generate more profit for the school.
“We’ve noticed daily sales are up about 25 percent, which is what we were hoping for… we’re looking forward to expanding the choice of merchandise, because our former space was so much smaller, we were limited as to how many different things we [could] have,” McGrath said.
Other than the profit raised for the school, the school store also works as a hands-on internship for students interested in business and marketing. The store is defined as a school based enterprise under its affiliation with Distributive Education Clubs of America. As DECA is an international club with focuses on business, marketing, and hospitality, this affiliation allows students to actively work and be involved in the school store behind the scenes.
“Once they learn how we order, reorder, [do] inventory, and stock, they take care of all of that,” McGrath said.
McGrath supervises the work the students do and handles the monetary aspect of the store but everything else is student run. This allows the students to get a realistic idea of what a career in this particular field might look like.
Senior Bella Donofrio and has been working in the school store since the start of last school year.
“I’m kind of the leader of the school store now because I’m the oldest and I run all the stuff, and I restock everything by myself, and I know all of the pricing, especially since I’ve
worked to make the new school store over the summer,” Donofrio said.
There’s a variety of different tasks to be done while working at the store. While the store is open, there always has to be a cashier, there has to be someone to hand drinks to customers, and someone has to be restocking consistently. When the store closes, items must be restocked, the room must be cleaned, and items may need to be reordered, Over summer break, Donofrio went into school to help set-up the new store location.
In total, she spent about two weeks, approximately four hours each day, of her own time, helping to reorganize, decorate, and stock the store in preparation for the new school year.
Dr. Jason Brisini, social studies teacher, also constructed the new school store.
Junior Jaiden Bumbulis has also been working in the school store since last school year.
“It’s just something different, I’m not the kind of student that likes to sit down and read out of a textbook, so something more hands-on like this is something that I really enjoy,” Bumbulis said.
The school store provides a learning environment that is unique to the ones which students have been in their whole lives. It gives students real-world experiences while learning valuable skills for business and marketing.
“I think it’s fun to have a school store because you can get gear, you can get snacks …but I think it’s cool especially because kids can work it,” Donofrio said
