What you can learn about entrepreneurship from this coffee shop
by Bolu Aderugbo
Most colleges have coffee shops on campus, but what about high schools? That idea prompted Andrew Farley, Brookfield East High School Principal, to help create the Spartan Union (SU) in 2016. Originally, SU just sold coffee and relied on community donations to fund their operation. Since then, it has grown its menu and uses profits to improve SU services while also giving back to Brookfield East High School and the surrounding community.
Spartan Union also provides another benefit—the Elmbrook School District gave Brookfield East students the opportunity to run the coffee shop as a class called, “Business Leadership.” The two-term course spans one full school year and allows students to earn capstone credit.
As a student participating in the Elmbrook School District’s LAUNCH program, I am involved in a project on entrepreneurship. Being familiar with the SU and knowing something of its history, I wanted to learn more about the coffee shop. While I wasn’t able to speak with Principal Farley for this blog post, I was able to talk with Mr. Joe Seaman, who teaches the Business Leadership class and serves as the coffee shop’s General Manager.
Here’s what I learned in my question and answer session with Mr. Seaman:
Q: What inspired you to start your business?
A: Mr. Farley came up with the idea for the Spartan Union. This was an old room. It was an old study hall, not being used, and he went to a college and saw a coffee shop at a college. And he said, “I want to bring that into Brookfield East.”
Q: How do you promote your business and attract new customers?
A: We have a marketing department that is always promoting and we’re putting stuff on social media almost daily. We have hundreds of followers. The goal for our marketing department is always to push revenue.
Q: Does the Spartan Union have any competition?
A: Well, yes. Kids walk in with Starbucks or Seven Brew. On a regular basis, mom and dad typically buy those as they’re driving to school. So we try to convince those kids. Every once in a while, we’ll have a direct competition on the menu board by making something that’s the same thing at Seven Brew or Starbucks. And, you know, run a social media post on that. Why spend $6 on a pumpkin spice latte at one of the big stores when you can come here and buy it for $3.50? It’s the same thing, and you’re giving back to the school. And the reason we can be a lot cheaper is because we don’t pay staff, we don’t pay rent, we don’t pay utilities, we don’t pay insurance. We have Stone Creek Coffee, which is very high quality. We have everything Collectivo and Seven Brew have, but they have expenses we don’t. So we can be $2 cheaper for the exact same thing.
Q: How do you balance the Spartan Union and work?
A: My first year of running this place, and I was by myself, I ran this before school, first block, fourth block. It’s the two blocks when it’s open. Learning how to run a business, teaching other classes—there were times where I was getting one hour of sleep per night. I could not get it off my mind. It was consuming me. Then it slowly faded away, but it wore me out the first month or two, when this place was getting going down. It’s part of running a business, though.
Q: What’s your biggest dream or goal for the company?
A: To always come up with something new. It’s not just new drinks and even new products. I have pictures of this place when we just started. And the room has developed every year to bigger and better things, from coffee to lemonade drinks to shakes. And then we brought in mini donuts; we have a mini-donut machine back there. It cost us $850. We have sold thousands of mini donuts.
This year we brought in mini pancakes. We have a mini-pancake machine, and now they’re doing samples, walking around school, letting kids try our mini pancakes. We expanded the courtyard. The courtyard was unused for 30 years. And the facility director said, “Joe, I’ve been here for 30 years. We’ve never used it.” It was literally a waste of space. We put $10,000 to $11,000 into it and now it’s a space where teachers in the warmer days are over, bringing their kids out there to study. We have a garden out there. We just put $2,000 into four raised beds. We’ve done apparel work with Burghardt. I think the dream is… I want our kids to always think about what we can do to make money outside of making drinks. And really giving the kids an opportunity to run something super, super cool.
Q: Are there any lessons that you can share with someone who is looking to start their own business?
A: You’re going to work hard and put in many hours. You have to set the vision for your employees to know where you’re going.
Q: Is there a mindset that helped you overcome setbacks?
A: Just focus on why we’re here and where we’re going. I want this to be like the vision of a varsity coach—to make it to state and win a state championship. I want this vision in my mindset to make me stronger.
(That concluded my Q&A with Mr. Seaman.)
When going into the interview, I was very excited to learn more about the Spartan Union. Thank you, Mr. Seaman, for taking the time to conduct the interview with me. I hope when young entrepreneurs read this blog post they get inspired to keep trying even if they fail.
For instance, the Spartan Union had to overcome many obstacles, such as people who opposed the idea of the coffee shop. Many times teachers complained about how SU was distracting students by interrupting teachers in the middle of a lecture or when students—who have friends who work at SU—ask to use the bathroom, make a trip to the coffee shop, and spend the rest of the time in SU instead of class.
Although still experiencing challenges—such as trying to get every teacher to believe SU is a good idea—Mr. Seaman and Mr. Farley don’t let that stop them from persevering. They want to give students high quality drinks and real-world experiences.
When interviewing Mr. Seaman, I learned a very valuable lesson, and that is the importance of time management. If you are a student and you eventually want to start your own business, you have to learn time management. Mr. Seaman explained how, when he first started managing SU, he only got around three hours of sleep. If he had kept this same habit, it would have caused him to be sleep deprived, leading to an increased chance of obesity, depression, and heart attack.
That made me realize that high schoolers should start to practice good time management. Getting into the habit now of doing tasks on time and getting enough sleep can only help train future entrepreneurs to be more effective at running their businesses.
Thanks for reading and feel free to share your thoughts or questions in the comments below.
Mini-Bio on the Author:
Bolu Aderugbo is a 12th grade student at Wauwatosa West High School. He is interested in majoring in marketing and enjoys listening to music. He looks forward to continuing to learn and grow as he explores new opportunities. Bolu participated in the Elmbrook School District’s LAUNCH program. For his particular project, Bolu wrote this blog post, as well as helped plan and host a networking event for students.