Do You Want A Coffee Shop in Your School?


I was inspired this summer by Breezy Special Ed and how she set up a coffee shop that the students manage and run!! The resource room teacher and I decided it would be a great opportunity for two of our students to partake in, so we started a Donors Choose page in order to receive the materials. Our Donor's Choose was for a coffee maker and supplies (cups, flavors, sugar, cream). We bought a coffee maker that grinds the beans as we thought this would be a fun step for the students and everyone knows beans taste better!

To start our project we sent a Google doc to all teachers inviting them to place an order for: coffee (flavors, decaf/regular, sugar/cream), water and at times we also sold donuts and fruit!  Teachers were able to place a standing order or order weekly.  The majority of our teachers placed a standing order so I created Coffee Cards!

Our Coffee Cards are color coded by types of orders, this helps with knowing how much coffee and water we need. Green was decaf, pink was regular, blue was water and yellow was banana. Teachers were able to choose from three flavors (vanilla, caramel, hazelnut) and/or sugar and cream.  As you can see I placed the total for the order in the bottom right hand corner to give students more independence while delivering the coffee by not having to be reminded of the total for each order. 



Our prices were:
Plain Coffee: .50 cents
Coffee with cream and/or sugar: .50 cents
Coffee with flavors: .75 cents 
Water: .25 cents
Banana: .25 cents


Once a week our two students come down in the morning to start the coffee and prepare the cups with the flavors and/or sugar and cream while the coffee brews. Usually our pot takes a while to brew so at this point the students would deliver the waters.  At the beginning of the year the students traveled through the halls with support as they were learning to read the teachers names as well as where the teachers were located.  Once they were able to deliver the orders without needing my support we let them do it on their own!! And they did a GREAT job!



Our students LOVE coffee day. One student states that this is his favorite day of the week and I'm pretty sure he RUNS to the classroom on this day! I love the fact that he always calls it coffee day!!

Students had to learn how to read all the flavors on the card as well as the bottle. We gave teachers a choice between 1 or 2 pumps of flavor so students had to make sure they had the correct amount of sugar, cream and/or flavor.

To keep the coffee cups from not tipping over and spilling I bought a piece of foam and cut holes that fit the cups almost exactly! They can't be too large or the cups will move around and they will spill! 



The skills that these students have learned has been amazing! Some of the skills that they have learned include:
  • Learned to read the names of the teachers
  • Learned to read the different flavors
  • Counting money
  • Giving change
  • Taking orders
  • Reading the order sheets and making coffee for each teacher
  • Manners (saying please, thank you)
  • Learning to wait until there is a good opportunity to give the coffee and not interrupt the class
  • Learning where staff members are located 
  • We gave them a life skill that they can use throughout their entire life
  • We also have taught them how much the materials we need to purchase cost and we take that out of the profit to teach them the concept of money!  Sweet teachers started giving them tips and we let them keep that money! :) They were so proud to get a tip!
  • Most importantly we gave them a purpose! 
 
These boys are so fun to work with and have made me laugh many!!  
One of the boys told the teacher if they do not like the way we make the coffee he'd give them a refund! Not sure where he learned that but good job! 
This same student would ask the principal on a DAILY basis if she was going to purchase coffee (she was trying to cut back), we'll he wore her down and she now orders coffee as much as she can! That's some great salesmanship if I've ever seen it! 



No comments