The School Store and Snack Shack, the primary vendors of SCN spiritwear and snacks, are student-operated and teacher-advised retail stores that provide job experience for students at North.
Interested students can begin working at the School Store their sophomore year or later after filling out an application, being interviewed, hired and trained for the job.
“Students have to go through a job application process. They’re filling out information about themselves. They have to provide references: teachers, coaches, mentors, so we follow up with those references. [Then] they have to go through a formal interview,” said School Store advisor Denise Leatherman.
Hired students attend a day of training over the summer to prepare them for working in the school store for the upcoming school year. Once the school year begins and the workers have gotten comfortable in their role, they have a quarterly evaluation to make sure that the business is running properly.
“They are evaluated quarterly on some employability skills. So the benefits to students, this is something they can add on their actual resume, to show a sense of work,” said Leatherman. “They’re working on those important life skills that are needed in next experiences. They’re working on their communication skills, problem-solving, working towards being efficient and effective because we’re asking them to engage in how ‘can we improve things and get better?’”
The School Store and Snack Shack are run by sales associates and managers who oversee operations.
There are 5 current managers in charge of various aspects of the School Store and Snack Shack. The Treasurer oversees all financial details, like monitoring revenue and expenditures, the Public Relations Manager develops communication for marketing and publicity, including social media accounts, the Apparel Manager is in charge of clothing and merchandise sold at the School Store, and the Food Manager and Drink Manager are in charge of ordering food items for the Snack Shack. Senior Tristan O’Dowd is serving as this year’s Food Manager.
“As the snack manager, what I do is about once every other week, I go down to Mrs. Leatherman’s office, and I just order a bunch of food,” said O’Dowd. “We have a budget, we have to stay underneath that, and I order everything that you see in the snack shack when you walk by.”
The clothing and other merchandise items sold at the school store are bought from a primary vendor as well as other merchandise vendors to meet the demand of our school’s needs.
“We have a main clothing vendor, and then we also can use other outside businesses depending on what the products are, but we have one main one for the clothing and then some of the other accessories and [similar] type items come from various places,” said Leatherman.
School Store employees meet with the advisors, Leatherman and business teacher Mike Horn, to make sure that the students are properly managing the business.
“We meet once a month before school, and that’s where we talk through the things that are going well, where could we improve issues, they have questions, they have additional training,” said Leatherman.
The proceeds earned from the School Store and Snack Shack merchandise are put back into clubs and organizations at North in need of funding.
“Clubs and organizations can come to us and request donations and we’re able to provide financial support to anybody within this school,” said Leatherman. “We have a donation request form that they can ask for, and then we take those to our meetings and we have the students talk through them.”
After working for the School Store, students earn various sums of money that they can use to put towards their college education.
“The biggest benefit I guess I haven’t mentioned was that for however long you work there… if you’re a manager or not, you do get some money that goes to college,” said O’Dowd. “Sometimes it could be a couple 100 bucks or you can even get up to $1000, $2,000 to go to college… and you’re also taking on other leadership and responsibility.”
Students working in the store are able to make connections with each other while gaining great experiences that can be used in their future work careers.
“I’m definitely developing customer service skills with the constant interactions [with] students coming by to the snack shack every day,” said O’Dowd. “Staying on top of all the tasks has definitely helped me with my responsibility.”
You can follow the school store on Instagram @scnschoolstore to view their promotions and advertisements.
