Sixteen student teams successfully produced and marketed a wide range of food products as part of the Market Day for Year 10 Commerce and Year 11 Business Studies students.

The whole process involved forming a team, establishing a business, deciding on a product or range of products, creating a business plan, determining roles, costing products, surveying the market to see how receptive it was to the product or ideas around the product, determining what the target market was, considering mark-up and pricing, looking at competing products and how they compared in terms of quality, presentation and price, looking at marketing strategies, and finally reflecting on the process and working out how the process could be improved on.

For the Year 11 students this was part of an assessment that required them to produce a formalised Business Plan that includes marketing and financial plans, followed by a formalised review of the activity, with respect to their plan goals. This makes-up a significant part of the students NCEA Level 1 credits in Business Studies.

Many of the groups had significant profits and the teams discovered that they did have the entrepreneurial flair. Students believed that they gained greater confidence from the process and are keen to try the process again in a different context.

Well done to all the students involved and to those who supported them.