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Bake sales have been a mainstay of school life for decades, but did you know that, as well as serving the school community, they also offer fantastic business lessons for the students involved?
Sales like these are often their first experience with the working world, which sees them from conception to execution. But what do bake sales actually teach students about business? Keep on reading as we consider!
# 1 – Mastering Marketing
Like businesses, cake sales don’t market themselves. To be successful, these events require fliers, word of mouth, and, increasingly, online advertising that ensures a good turnout. Obviously, this is all on a small scale, but allowing students to complete these tasks themselves can be a fantastic starting point for their professional development. In particular, this kind of low-level marketing is a fantastic stage on which to test everything from content creation to brand tone of voice, and even social media strategies.
Whether students intend to follow an entrepreneurial path, enter the field of marketing, or simply become assets to a growing company down the line, there’s no denying that these are skills for life.
# 2 – The Importance of Product
Let’s be honest; bake sales are not an exacting art, and nor are there countless competitors knocking down the door with better offerings. But this kind of school sale still sends an initial, all-important message – product quality is fundamental for success.
Of course, no one’s expecting the most amazing cakes in the world from a group of kids who are trying to raise money, but the fact remains that the most sales will come from the best quality options. Equally, earnings will soar if the cakes on offer look impressive at a glance.
This also provides an important lesson in terms of pricing. If cakes are burnt, flat, or otherwise problematic, price points drop along with sales. By comparison, cakes baked with careful measures like quality control, detailed decoration, and additional flourishes, can sell for more, at larger quantities. And those priorities also happen to be some of the best business lessons young minds could learn.
# 3 – Streamlining Sales
Let’s not forget that bake sales also become the first opportunity that many students get to handle cash in a transactional setting. Once, this was a great opportunity to count change, but times have changed. Now, successful cake sales rely on everything from the handling of physical cash to the management of card payments. And lessons surely follow.
The ability to get to grips with card payment processing at a young age is especially effective for encouraging modern business-savvy minds. Whether they go on to use another hospitality POS in a food truck or restaurant setting, or they end up using systems like these in an entirely different industry, you can guarantee they’ll carry those same skills for life.
Cake sales might not seem like much, but this could be one of the best ways to encourage young entrepreneurial minds for these reasons and more!
