School snack shop closed due to new policy
With the shutters down and the door locked, a room which used to contain a plethora of snack items sits vacant near the Commons’ south doors.
With the shutter drawn, the Bird’s Nest sits desolate. The Bird’s Nest is closed until further notice because it may compete with the school’s food service profit.
According to marketing teacher Phil Roth, the school board decided in June to close the Bird’s Nest, the school’s snack shop, this year during and around meal times due to “competitive food sales” last year.
The school board set up a new policy classifying “competitive food” as “any food or beverage service available to students that is separate and apart from the districts nonprofit federally reimbursed food service program.”
The new policy also states “competitive food” can not be served a half-hour before breakfast or first lunch and cannot reopen until a half-hour after breakfast or third lunch.
However, Roth says the Bird’s Nest’s nearly $4000 profit last year—all of which went to school organizations—did not seem to compete with the district’s $6,246,660 budget for food services.
Roth used the Bird’s Nest as a tool to teach his Marketing III students the keys to running a small business.
“We had to handle inventory, work with customers (and) advertise new products,” senior Weston Hack said. “Basically everything that a small business would have to do, we did.”
Developing these skills was the students’ goal in running the Bird’s Nest.
“That’s really one of the missions of the Bird’s Nest—to be a live lab for a learning experience, to learn how to run a small business,” Roth said. “We don’t consider it a concession stand; we really considered it a part of the curriculum for Marketing III.”
When the school year started, Roth and his students sought out representatives from the district office to hear their case.
“We weren’t sure the board realized that the Bird’s Nest was part of the Marketing curriculum,” Roth said. “The Marketing III students put together a presentation that we presented to the District Director of Food Service and the administrator in charge of HR and Board Relations to see if we could convince them to intercede with the board.”
However, senior Savannah Reeb felt the presentation was destined to fail.
“(The district representatives) came in with an answer in mind,” Reeb said. “They just didn’t really care about where we were coming from, and they didn’t really try to come up with a compromise.”
Although their first attempt was not received as well as they hoped, Marketing III students continue to work on a compromise that will allow them to operate the Bird’s Nest during lunch.
“We are still in discussion with the District Administration, and (we are) discussing compromise options,” Roth said.
The Marketing III students hope that they find a solution, but until then, they work on developing other skills.
“We’re working on some college prep stuff, and that’s benefitting us, even though it doesn’t really have anything to do with marketing,” Hack said.
Regardless, the students feel the class has been slighted by the loss of the Bird’s Nest.
Loading ...“It’s something we looked forward to as freshmen, sophomores and juniors so we could run the Bird’s Nest, and now we can’t because of a silly regulation,” Reeb said.
Not only are the Marketing III students and teacher upset, faculty and students outside of the marketing program have voiced their concerns as well.
“We get questions all the time like, ‘Where’s the Bird’s Nest?” Reeb said. “Or like, ‘We tried to buy food from the Bird’s Nest and they were closed. What’s wrong with the Bird’s Nest? We want the Bird’s Nest back.’ That’s all we hear. They want the Bird’s Nest back.”
