A shift at the Swanky Swine

The Swanky Swine is Woodlawn Community Academy’s school store. We were established to help our students learn to make change. However, we hope that the change we make goes far beyond coins! We are open every week on Wednesdays and Fridays during lunch.  On the days we aren’t open,  the student employees of the Swanky Swine, practice adding purchases and making change, memorize prices, calculate inventory and profits,  learn what it takes to be a good employee, and study basic business terms.

This week, our employees made and decorated cupcakes to sell to our customers. They were strawberry and chocolate in honor of Valentines Day!

Here is what our drink table looks like when it’s all set up.  We always decorate with piggy banks since this is where our store name comes from.  The pink drink is our signature “Swanky Swill” that is very popular and one of our best sellers.

This week, 2 of our girls were in charge of set up and inventory.  After setting up the table and preparing the Swanky Swill and hot chocolate, the girls count up all of our items and record them on an inventory sheet.  When the sales shift is over, they will count the items again to see how much we sold.  They record the data and then all of our employees work together to calculate our sales, our costs and our profit.

This past Wednesday, all of our boys worked together on the sales shift.  Both the drink station and the food station have one cashier and one customer service rep.  The employees work independently greeting our customers, assisting them with their purchases and making change. They are even learning to make small talk! They do a great job.

After the sales shift is over, 2 of the students will count down the cash and calculate our sales.  Later, 2 other students will roll coins to take to the bank. This provides good practice in coin recognition and coin counting. All of the hands on practice is really helping develop strong money math skills!

Everyone works together to clean up and wash the dishes before the shift is officially over.

This is what a typical day looks like at the Swanky Swine. Our employees work really hard and do such a great job. We’re very proud of them!

Tags: Florida school, school stores, special education, special needs students, swanky swine, transition, transition services, vocational training