This is a guest post by essayist Nancy Shohet West.
Back in 2006, I wrote this article for the Boston Globe, about the tweens and young teens who were using Carlisle’s new Farmers Market to develop their entrepreneurial skills. As so often happens when I work on a feature story, I became enchanted with my subjects and developed great admiration for these young entrepreneurs.
But, with the typical nearsightedness of a parent, I couldn’t imagine my own children standing among their ranks. At ages three and seven that year, my kids’ only interest in our local Farmers Market was how many free samples of chocolate chip cookies they could cadge before I would notice, and how many dogs they could play with while I chatted with the other browsers.
It doesn’t seem as if four years have gone by, but Farmers Market starts up for the summer this weekend, and my kids are ready. Not to eat or play: to sell. They’ve been practicing their baking skills all week. Their product, they decided, would be banana bread. At the time they settled on this plan, they’d never made banana bread, but they knew it was a specialty of mine, one that they’d heard guests at our house and recipients of our gifts compliment many times. I agreed to help them get their baking abilities up and running.
They chose the business name themselves: Who’s On First. It was over a month ago that they selected the name and made a sign, using stencil letters they found at Staples. Earlier that week, Tim’s fifth grade teacher had played a YouTube clip of Abbott and Costello doing their best-known routine, and the class had been in stitches over it. I love the juxtaposition of old and new: the fact that with all the media currently available to them, nothing is funnier to the fifth graders than a 1940’s comedy routine – but also the fact that they’re all familiar with it now thanks to an innovation as state-of-the-art as YouTube.
I started teaching Tim and Holly, co-proprietors of Who’s On First, my method for making banana bread earlier this week. The first step, I reminded them, is always to wash hands. That part they had down pat. I explained the other steps and they discussed it for a while to determine how to best divide the labor. Because Holly is so much physically smaller and a bit less manually dexterous than Tim, it was fairly easy to decide who should do what. And calling Holly “less manually dexterous” is a euphemism of the first degree. Normally I just refer to her as “the Gravity Queen.” She’s never yet picked up an object she couldn’t manage to drop within moments. So I wasn’t too enthusiastic about her handling much of anything in the way of cooking ingredients, knowing whatever she touched, I would end up cleaning up off the kitchen floor.
I overcame that reservation early on, realizing that cleaning up was just going to have to be a big part of this endeavor for all three of us. And the kids settled into a routine as we practiced with one, then two, then eventually four batches of banana bread. Holly greases the pans while Tim peels the bananas. Tim melts the butter while Holly breaks the eggs into a bowl and beats them with a whisk. (To my surprise, the Gravity Queen isn’t bad with eggs. But I’m not letting her anywhere near the flour.) Tim mixes the dry ingredients while Holly beats together the bananas and sugar. When they’re done, I pour the batter into the pans for them and slide the whole set into the oven.
I’m looking forward to their first day of sales (or their IPO, as my husband calls it). They’ve worked hard together, and I’m hoping they get a gratifying response in the form of lots of customers. I’m also curious to see if they can maintain a regular baking schedule throughout the summer and not let the novelty wear off. If they can, they could each enjoy a satisfying amount of spending money over the next few months, and learn something about running a business and working together. If they can’t sustain their interest, we’ll eat the results of their initial efforts and try again another year.
But my fingers are crossed for a fine opening day on Saturday. Although I couldn’t have imagined it back when I was an objective on-the-scene reporter writing about other kids working as Farmers Market vendors, my children will now stand proudly among them. And I can’t wait to see how it goes for them.
Chapter 2
With two weeks of Farmers’ Market under their belts, my children are off to a marvelous start, and it’s interesting to itemize the skills developed and lessons accrued so far.
The first Saturday, they baked 20 mini-loaves and priced them at three dollars each. In the four-hour stint of Farmers Market, they sold 17 loaves, which was a fine number. As I told them, it left one for us to put in the freezer for whenever we next needed a ready-made “hostess gift”; one to cut up for samples the following week (as avid Whole Foods shoppers, we are well entrenched in the culture of samples, and the kids believed this was an important attraction at their booth); and one for our family to eat in the hours following Farmers Market. (“It’s hard baking for other people and not getting to try any ourselves!” Tim had commented earlier in the day.)
The second Saturday, they baked 21 loaves and sold out within the first two hours the market was open. At ten o’clock, just as the parking lot was filling up, Tim and Holly sold their last two loaves to one chatty customer who said her children would be delighted with the treat. Farmers Market still had another two hours to go, but we were out of inventory – and the kids had collected a total of $63, mostly in ones, which they divvied up when they got home. Astounded at their commercial success, they set a goal of 25 loaves, maybe even 30, for the next week’s market. It would require them to spend a lot of time baking, they knew, but they were elated by their initial success and inspired to work harder than ever.
So far this week they’re halfway to their goal, but they’ll keep baking over the next two days. It doesn’t take them very long to make a batch from start to finish.
They still rely on me for a few tasks – they don’t like handling the well-ripened and slightly mushy bananas, so I do the peeling and drop the pieces into a mixing bowl, and I always take on the job of sliding the loaf pans in and out of the oven – but they’ve got the rest of it down to a well-managed routine, with Holly greasing the pans and whisking the eggs, Tim beating the bananas with sugar and combining the dry ingredients. They take turns when it comes to stirring the dry ingredients into the wet, and then they’re done. I help them clean up; ideally they’d do this part on their own too, but it’s a lot to expect.
Week Three is this Saturday. I’m hoping faces will become familiar and the kids will be rewarded with repeat business. I’m already happy with what they’ve learned and look forward to seeing them further develop their business acumen, baking talents and time management skills as the summer progresses. Business is brisk so far, and we’re off to an encouraging start.
Read the rest of Nancy’s story here: Beyond Lemonade Stands: the Story of How 2 Kids Started a Summer Business (Part II)
Nancy Shohet West is a freelance journalist, essayist and blogger in suburban Boston. You can see more of her work at www.NancyShohetWest.com.
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