On February 1, Maize South officially opened its new school store. Located in the old winter concession stand, the store will sell slushies every Tuesday and Thursday during lunch to raise money for Business Professionals of America.

For those who aren’t familiar with Business Professionals of America, the club competes regionally and statewide in many events in categories such as finance, digital communication and design, health administration, and others. Club members who take their event to the national level can expect expenses ranging from $12-1500 per person including travel and hotel fees.

“BPA is an expensive club,” Amber McNew, Head Advisor for the Business Professionals of America and administrator of the store, said. “It would be awesome if we could raise enough to help out every kid going to Nationals.”.

Maize South was supposed to have a new store reopen with the recent addition (2021), but it ended up being a much larger project than anticipated and got pushed aside.

“It’s been part of something we’ve done since we opened the building,” McNew said. “BPA opened a store years ago and we did all kinds of stuff, and we had to put it on the back burner… it’s something that we used to have, so we’re bringing it back, and our store’s going to look different than it did before.”

BPA members will be the face of the operation, making and selling the products themselves, but who will run the administrative side of the business? McNew says she will have a third block class called Applied Business- School Store, and the students will take care of all the behind-the-scenes tasks such as inventory count, expense management, and budgeting.

“It’s an applied business class, which is the top tier business class, teaching you how to run a business first hand,” McNew said. “It’s a business-based learning experience.”

What does “different” look like for the future of the store? McNew says that she has big plans, including more than just slushies. The store is still in its early stages, only selling a couple of select items for now, but she eventually intends for it to be a coffee shop, open before school, during Flex, lunch, and after school.

“Well it’s different because we’re going to probably be waiting until the fall, you know, to open it,” McNew said. “My class will create the logo, create the image of our business to buy the supplies to do all of that.”

The store, temporarily nicknamed the “Slushie Shack”, will only be a small fundraiser for now, but one could expect some major changes once the fall semester of Applied Business gets the ball rolling. The new store will be modeled after the previous store, Maize High’s store, and McNew’s new vision of a cafe.

“This is a part-time setup, you know,” McNew said. “However, the slush machine will still be in the store, we’ll have it forever, but our goal is to be a coffee shop.”

Maize High has a long-running store, and it has been successful for many years. Dana Handy, the current advisor of Maize High’s store and teacher of their Applied Business class, has stated that the store existed long before her time with the district, but it has moved and grown with the school under her advisory.

“It used to just be a little closet, and we just sold school supplies,” Handy says. “We’ve moved like twice since then, it’s progressed into more of like a convenience store now.”

The store has become a very popular hotspot for the Maize High students, and Maize South may expect similar popularity with their store in the future.