Coffee carts offer a wonderful hands-on learning experience for life skills and transition students in high school and vocational learning settings, to help them prepare for the world of work. Everyone loves a coffee, and standing and having a chat while you enjoy some freshly brewed coffee and a homemade cake is one of those luxuries that were sorely missed during the pandemic. A coffee cart program could be just the thing to build skills and knowledge in work readiness and employability for your young people with additional learning needs.
Coffee cart programs are popular at many schools as a tool for building work readiness skills for students.
Coffee carts are great because they help students practice and apply their literacy and numeracy skills to a real-world context. They also get the chance to develop their employability skills; communication, problem-solving, teamwork, and working with a diverse range of people are all essential in a customer service task like working at a coffee cart.
Skills like solving problems are great for building work readiness. These handy digital mini stories use a simple scenario approach to encourage students to solve problems at work.
Here is an outline of what you can do to get ready to deliver a coffee cart program that will boost your students' knowledge and skills and become a wonderful asset for your whole school community:
Write a plan
Most great teaching and learning experiences begin with a great plan! To establish a coffee cart program from scratch needs support from the administration and leadership level of your school. They need to be convinced that the cart will deliver solid learning outcomes and that it will not see you dipping into the school bank account too far, or running your cart at a significant loss.
Your plan should cover:
Background to the program and your setting outline, and a very brief outline of the overall plan
Description of the student group or cohort, including their specific learning needs, ages and requirements
Academic learning outcomes related to areas of the curriculum such as literacy and numeracy skills, health, language and science
Employability skills development including teamwork, problem solving and communication
Aim and objectives that clearly state what you plan to achieve and in what timeframe
Measures of success which show how you will know your coffee cart has been successful in achieving its aim and objectives (these could be written as Key Performance Indicators)
Make a budget
Write a budget to show what it will cost to establish your coffee cart, and how much it will cost to keep it running each semester and year.
Expenses
Break your budget down into two expenses sections:
Set up costs (coffee machines, tables, chairs, cleaning products, trolley, coffee art equipment)
Ongoing costs (cups, spoons, coffee beans or pods, napkins, milk)
Income
Include an income section for your budget which includes:
Estimated number of coffees, teas, hot chocolates and other drinks to be sold per day, week or month multiplied by their sale cost
Estimated number of other items (snacks, cakes, slices etc) to be sold per day, week or month, multiplied by their sale cost
Profit/loss/break even estimates for daily, weekly and monthly time periods
Grants
Many schools access grants as seed funding to kick start a coffee cart program. Look for philanthropic trusts, local businesses or government funding which can support your new program. Find a point of difference to support your grant, such as teaching living skills, building independence, focusing on sustainability or building business skills for students. Your grant application will need to include a description of the program, key performance measures (things like how many students, what changes will occur and how you will measure success).
Embed sustainability
As people become increasingly aware of the environmental costs of coffee production and service, there is a rapidly growing demand for helping new workers in the sector learn about sustainable practices. Including a sustainability focus within your coffee cart program may align well with the broader approach within your school setting. Teaching young people how to work in hospitality in a sustainable way is great for boosting environmental actions within your school and also building their awareness and knowledge base once they are in a workplace.
Sustainable actions within a coffee cart program can include:
buying plant based cups, lids, bowls, plates and stirrers
sourcing ingredients from fair trade suppliers
developing a composting program to manage food waste
designing posters to encourage use of keep cups rather than single use items
using a rewards program to encourage customers to bring their own keep cups once they have purchased them
designing a sustainable keep cup with your school or store name and logo to promote your coffee cart
Focus on the students
A coffee cart program can be as large or small as you want. Be careful that you do not allow the project to become all-consuming, so that it is simply too difficult to manage with your other teaching responsibilities. Instead, focus closely on your own students and try to match your coffee cart program to what they really need. Look at their IEPs, consider the rest of their academic and community based program, and think about how a coffee cart can align with their career and post-school goals. It is inevitable that things will go awry from time to time, and when they do, come back to the basics:
What do my students need to know, right now?
How can the coffee cart program relate to their IEP goals and objectives?
What skills should they be developing?
How does what we do in coffee cart help them in preparing for the world as independent adults?
How can we improve, grow and develop over time?
A clear focus on students and their needs and goals will help you refocus your energies on the things that really matter!
Systems of work
Design systems of work that show students what a real life workplace might be like. Include uniforms, name tags, start and finish times, clock on and off procedures and workplace documents. You can develop a set of policies and procedures for your setting, such as phone policy, sick leave arrangements and cleaning procedures.
A sample list of policies and procedures could include:
Phone use
Break times
Timesheets
Arrival and departure
Cleaning processes
First aid
Managing money and floats
First day at work
The first day at work with a coffee cart program is an exciting one for everyone involved! There's lots to do and learn. Talk about what to expect with your student cohort. Cover regular activities and expectations, and who to talk to when unexpected situations arise. Bring your group together at the end of the first day for a debrief, so they can reflect on their successes and get ready for day 2!
The digital resource Work skills in a coffee shop gives students an introduction to a first day in a coffee shop setting, following the journey of Lian, a new worker. Students select the options to guide their learning journey as they follow Lian through the events of her first day at work.
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