CHURRO LIBRE

I am in my final year of college *FINALLY* and I'm taking the ever so popular "Business Core". SO NOT POPULAR! It's A LOT of work and very tiresome. We are expected to attend class on a daily basis from 8-10 AM, do homework, study for exams, and run a business all for 9 credits?!?!?! CRAZY!!!

The whole purpose of the business core is to not only attend class but to have a feel of what it's like to run a business in the real world, so that's why they make us create a business and run it. Any profit we make goes to the BYU Hawaii scholarship fund. There are about 63 students in the core and we are split up into 6 teams of 10-11 students on each team. There are 11 members on my team, including me, and we started working as a group about 6 weeks ago. We debated for weeks what we were going to do and after many meetings, we decided to sell churros. We created a business proposal (which took 12+ hours to work on and required we pull an all nighter) and presented it to the Dean and other investors. We were granted $1,000 to start our business. ALL THE HARD WORK PAID OFF!!

Me, Aushra, & Alex

Last Saturday, Feb. 23rd, was the last women's and men's basketball game of the season and we decided to start our first day of selling at the games. It turned out OK. We only sold about 50 churros in the span of 3 hours. That made me a little nervous. The following Monday was our big GRAND OPENING DAY at the Seasider, which is a place for students to grab a bite to eat, buy a snack, get ice cream, etc. We are only allowed to sell at the Seasider or the concession stands at games. It turned out great! We sold 204 churros in 3 1/2 hours! It was a much better turn out than the basketball game. I think our advertising and hanging up banners around campus helped out. Tuesday, we sold 172 churros. I was kind of disappointed, but we knew the numbers would drop. But then, Wednesday we sold 210 churros!!! On Wednesday, we sold even more churros than our Grand Opening Day! We were stoked! Thursday and Friday turned out great as well. By Wednesday, we broke even!! We didn't borrow the full $1,000 that was granted to us, so we broke even fast! From here on out, everything will be profit minus some minimal expenses such as sugar, tin foil, etc.

Alex, Kaj, Michael, Me, Aushra, Mayra, Sung, & Rai

Sung and Alex baking the churros

Who knew churros would do so well?! So our company name is CHURRO LIBRE (from the movie Nacho Libre) and our colors are blue and red. It actually has been a lot of fun running the business after all the hoopla we had to go through. It was a nightmare in the beginning, but it looks as though everything is running smoothly now. The Seasider manager, Ivona, has been so helpful. She is letting us use a portable oven where we bake our churros. We can bake up to 7 churros (really 14 churros cut in half) at a time (425 degrees at 6 minutes). We ordered 5 boxes (100/box) of 16" churros and sold out within a week! FANTASTIC NEWS!! We cut the churros in half and sell one for $1 or two (which is really one 16" churro) for $1.50. Who said we didn't know how to market?! HAHA! I know, I know, it's kind of a rip off when you can buy a 16" churro at COSTCO for only $1.05, but hey, it's for scholarship funds OK??

I have made some great friends with some of my team members. I especially enjoy working with Michael, Alex, Aushra, and Leslie. Michael is the comedian on our team and he makes us laugh all the time!