The library doors open, and in walk two friends carrying a plate of cookies. They sprinkle dried blueberries on the white icing and pass the plate to a smiling customer.
This is one of the sales made by freshmen Brooke Kosnjek and Alex Cunningham, longtime friends who recently started a baking business at Bellevue East. Kosnjek and Cunningham started the business after sharing their baked goods with family and finding them popular.
“I really like cooking and baking,” Kosnjek said. “I think it’s really fun, it’s really relaxing.”
Cunningham and Kosnjek spent a day testing different recipes. Eventually, they settled on their current menu, which includes garden tea cookies, jam fingerprint cookies, brownies, and more.
“We tried…the jam ones and the tea ones,” Cunningham said. “We thought they were really good and we had other people try them and they thought they were really good so we’re like, we should sell them.”
Cunningham and Kosnjek organize sales over email. Once a sale is confirmed, they bake the cookies and schedule a time to meet with the buyer.
“We make them preferably the night before or in the morning so they’re nice and fresh,” Kosnjek said.
Neither Kosnjek or Cunningham are taking business or culinary arts classes. However, Kosnjek has learned business acumen from her father.
“My dad, he likes to teach me things very business related,” Kosnjek said. “He thinks it’d be nice for me to know all these things. So… I know a lot about business.”
According to Junior Achievement USA, good skills for business owners to have include strong communication, financial literacy, and adaptability. Business instructor Benjamin Dalton also mentions work ethic as an important skill.
“When you shoot for your dreams…the biggest part of it is being able to motivate yourself to get out of bed and make it happen,” Dalton said. “You have to live and breathe it.”
Running a business can also teach young people new abilities, such as how to learn from failures. Dalton says that professional communication and the capability to sell yourself can be developed through entrepreneurship.
“How to sell something is an extremely valuable trait,” Dalton said. “Even if that business doesn’t last you…you learn how to sell a product or a service, but then you learn how to sell yourself if you were going for a job in the future.”
Dalton encourages entrepreneurs to figure out how their business is unique from competitors. Blue Zenith Design states that business owners should ask themselves what group of people their products appeal to and what advantages they have over other competitors.
“You can start a lawn care business, you can start a lemonade stand, you can start selling clothes or whatever it is,” Dalton said, “but you have to find what about your product or your service is going to be special.”
While Kosnjek and Cunningham develop their business, they have one goal in mind: to make others happy. They started selling baked goods to bring joy to others’ lives and continue to work towards that objective each time they create a new item.
“It’s really fun just to make a business and make other people satisfied,” Cunningham said.