Coffee carts are being used in classrooms all around the world. And today I want to share my best tips for having a special education classroom coffee cart. On the blog today I’m going to show you how to set one up from scratch. I’ll also be sharing the benefits a coffee cart can have in your classroom.
What is a Classroom Coffee Cart?
It’s pretty much as it sounds. It’s where you’ll have a mini coffee shop set up in your classroom to act as a business. I like to set ours up on a rolling cart because this makes it easier for us to move around. Do you have a room you can set up a coffee area? Great! However, you may not have an area – and you’re struggling for storage space. That’s ok too! You don’t need a huge amount of space for this. You could set up your coffee cart on a rolling cart -and these are pretty inexpensive to purchase too!
How Much Do I Need to Spend?
You can really spend as much or as little as you want. I’d recommend completing a business discussion with your students and all deciding from there what you need to purchase for your coffee cart. Put together a shopping list and work out the total. Now decide how you are going to fund this.
Some ways are;
- Ask on DonorsChoose.
- Write a note to students families asking if they have anything that they could donate. You never know who your families are or who the know. They may work in a cafe who would be willing to donate items!
- Share on social media and set up a fundraising page.
- Submit a proposal to your management team to see if the school can lend you money from the budget. Once you’ve made a profit, you can return the money.
- You may be in the position to purchase the items yourself. Then, reclaim the money when the coffee cart is making a profit.
- Visit local coffee shops and cafes. See if they are able to donate anything to you. Firstly, most are more than happy to help out local school projects. Secondly, it means more advertising for them!
In conclusion – if you work it right, you could set up a coffee cart without any cost to yourself or your school!
Why Should I Have a Classroom Coffee Cart?
You may be sat there thinking that this sounds like a lot of work. Especially trying to get all the money together and seeking permission from relevant parties. That’s without running the coffee cart. But, once you have one set up – you’re going to see just how beneficial a classroom coffee cart is!
The Benefits;
- Your students will be able to get a real feel for what having a job is like. In addition, it will teach them relevant skills that will be very beneficial for them in the real world.
- Working on the coffee cart means your students will get the chance to work on everyday life skills. For instance, this could even be cleaning up, washing dishes, making conversations, working together as a team etc.
- It gives your students an area of responsibility. They can be in charge of something and take responsibility for that role. If they’re the cleaner – they have to be cleaning! Nobody else will do it for them as they’re doing their own jobs.
- Your students will have the chance to work on their social skills. Making conversation, taking orders, dealing with ‘customers’ are all hugely important skills that will have a huge benefit.
- Teamwork. Having the coffee cart will give them a chance to work on this skill more regular. Doing this will also help your students to see why working as a team is so important.
- Your students will have the chance to work with money. Something that can be a difficult skill to grasp. They’ll be accepting money, giving change, counting it. And all of these skills are really beneficial for your students. We like to have an ‘accountant’ and their job is to record our expenses and income for the week. We give them receipts and they go through them, and add them all up. They LOVE this role – and its’ just another great way to work on important math skills.
How Do I Set One Up?
You may be thinking about all the things you need to do to set up a coffee cart. And then you’re probably starting to panic about how much work is involved.
Don’t worry. Have I ever let you down? I’m here to save the day and give you almost everything that you need to set up your classroom coffee cart.
And it’s all included right here, in my classroom coffee cart set-up pack.
This pack includes pretty much everything you need – and it’s editable. So you can truly personalize this to make it fit for you, your classroom and your students.
What’s Included?
Accountancy
Weekly trackers; Income tracker, expenses tracker, income & expenses tracker. For instance, this will get your students working on number recognition, money skill, addition, counting and so much more. You can also have your students to compare income/expenses to find your profit/loss margin.
Advertising
Poster templates for your students to use in order to advertise the new coffee cart.
Awards
2 certificate templates for each award: ‘Employee of the Week’ and ‘Employee of the Month.’ In addition to handing out the awards, we also like to have them on display by our coffee cart for the week/month. My students love this – and being able to see themselves.
Bunting
‘Coffee Cart’ bunting for you to use to decorate. We love to add a little decoration to our cart. However, I’ve also included some blank templates so you can make your own bunting to decorate too!
Business Discussion Pack
I love to bind this together as a finished book when completed so that we can use it as evidence for the work that the students did when setting up this business. It includes room for brainstorming ideas and working out exactly what the business will be.
Customer Feedback
Notes for your customers to fill in to give you feedback on how your coffee cart is going and how your students are performing. Above all, you want to ensure that your students are completing their jobs effectively. And that the coffee cart is working well. And these feedback forms are perfect for this.
Easy Set-Up Guide
I’ve given you lots of ways to set up a coffee cart. However, I want to make it as easy and accessible as possible for you! So, in addition to all the resources, I’ve included an easy set-up guide. This will walk you through all the different resources included and how to use them.
Employee Rota
A visual rota so that you, your staff and your students can see who is working the coffee cart and when.
Job Skills
This includes vacancy adverts. Job application forms for students to fill in. There are job descriptions included to remind students what their job entails. Interview questions for you to use if conducting interviews with students to apply for the jobs. These all come ready filled out – but there’s also templates included so that you can edit these and make your own up too.
Labels
We all know how much easier things can run in our classrooms when we have visuals. So there’s a range of labels included for you to use.
Letter to Management
Use this letter template to write a letter to your management team asking for permission for your coffee cart.
Letter to Families
Use this letter template to write a letter to your students families asking for permission for them to work on your classroom coffee cart.
Loyalty Cards
These are a great way to reward your customers who are purchasing from your classroom coffee cart. Customers purchase 9 drinks – then they have their 10th drink free.
Menu
This template is perfect for you to create menus for your students to hand out. This way people know what is available on your classroom coffee cart. You can use the templates however you want. We like to make our menus visual so that my students can read the menus too.
Name Tags
These come with a few different options, and some will fit into lanyard holders too. Students will feel more ‘official’ when they have name tags when working on the coffee cart.
Order Forms
These order forms are a great way to get your students out and communicating with their customers, taking orders, and recording the data. Then, students read off the order forms in order to complete the orders. In addition, this will also help your students to work on their reading, understanding, processing and following instruction skills.
Pay
If you intend to ‘pay’ your students for working on the coffee cart each week, these are included for you to use. It helps the coffee cart to feel more official – and again treats it more like a job, where your students can work on important job skills. Above all, it gives your students a reward after they have completed their work.
Reminder Posters
We hang these posters up around our coffee cart. They are great reminders for the students for what they should be doing when working the coffee cart. I.e – Wash your hands.
Reminder Cues
I like to provide my students with visual reminder cues when working on the coffee cart. I.e ‘Would you like to order anything from our coffee cart?’ ‘Would you like milk and sugar?’ I put them together as keyrings for my students to wear and refer to when needed.
Shopping Lists
We love checking how much stock we have left of different things for our classroom coffee cart. After that, we put together the weekly shopping lists for what we need to buy.
Signs
I have included open and closed signs for you. Because everyone will run their coffee cart different, I’ve left these as templates. You can then go on and add open/closed days and times to the signs to suit your classroom and set up.
Social Stories
‘Applying for a Job’ and ‘Working on the Coffee Cart’ are both included. For some of our students, the thought of a coffee cart can be overwhelming, and hard to understand. This is when I pull out the social stories. Their visual approach works as an aide for my students to understand the process and steps involved.
Survey
Ideas you have for your coffee cart may not appeal to others. Because of this, I always like to hand out a survey before we set up the coffee cart. I send students around the classrooms to hand out the surveys. At the end of the week they go back around and collecting the surveys. We spend time together looking at the data from the surveys and how we can use this with our coffee cart. I.e What drinks are the most popular?
You can also tune into our podcast episode where I talk all about classroom coffee carts here.
More Ideas
Are you looking for other ways to incorporate a fun coffee theme into your classroom? Check out these adorable free name tags and coffee classroom decor!
This bundle is perfect if you want to go all out and have a room devoted to your coffee business – these are perfect! Find them by clicking on the images down below.
And these editable labels can be used around your classroom as decor – or for your coffee cart too!
Did you find this blog post helpful for finding out more about classroom coffee carts? If you did, please consider sharing this most with your friends and colleagues to help them too!
Do you have a classroom coffee cart? Or a business set up in your classroom? Let us know in the comments down below.
