Students make up for canteen loss

Otago Daily Times

03-06-2025

After the loss of their school canteen, a group of industrious Gore students have seen a gap in the market, selling cheese rolls for charity and school credit.
As part of their business studies class, a group of St Peter's College year 12 and 13s have been selling cheese rolls every Wednesday, at morning tea and lunch, and donating the proceeds to charity.
The school's canteen used to be run by staff of Rosmini House, the hostel on campus, which closed down last year due to a declining roll.
When the hostel closed, the tuck shop went with it, and now students Tori Pont, Nia Robertson, Makayla Taylor and Addi McHaffie are serving southern delicacies to the school's students and teachers.
Commerce, economics, business and agribusiness studies teacher Will Byars said the way his students could get around the rules of being able to sell food on campus was to treat the catering as a fundraising drive and donate the money to The Cancer Society.
"They've got some financial and social goals around that," he said.
The young entrepreneurs were part of a combined class who he said had a particularly "good batch" of businesses this year.
He said his student Millie McFadzien was working with Waituna Eel and making eel pate, which she would be serving as an entree at the Southland Business Excellence Awards next month.
Another group had the "innovative idea" of a "basketball cube", which was all about improving shooting technique for young basketballers.
The business ideas are also part of the national Young Enterprise scheme competition, which is a charity-funded programme that fosters and provides mentoring for business ideas of senior high school students for a year.
Next week, the students, along with other schools across Southland, will be heading to Invercargill to do a five-minute pitch of their ideas to Southland Business Chamber members.
"They're going to talk about their marketing plan, so it's quite daunting for them to talk to other adults about their idea," Mr Byars said.
As students and some teachers lined up for the lunchtime rush, Addi said it could be stressful when everyone comes out as once and they had to go fast, but it was not too bad, as they split the jobs evenly between four of them.
In an organised operation, she said they made the rolls the day before and prepared the ham and cheese toasties, which sold for $2 each.
They had just started selling sherbert fizzes also.
Their goal was to make $500 per term — but they had only been going for three weeks and were yet to crunch the numbers, she said.
Mr Byars said he was going to make sure they did their banking and knew their profit margin for the week.
Food technology teacher Lisa Perkins, who was popping in on the girls' activities, said they were doing a great job.
"They are following all the food safety standards which is good," she said.
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