Day 1 of The Jumping Bean

Today, Teen Entrepreneur Boot Camp kicked off a new session with the start of a new espresso bar/bakery in the South Street Seaport vicinity on the corner of Front and Beekman Streets. Upon piling into the drab-walled building at the early time of 9:00, students were off to a spectacular start. By immediately defining crucial terms, such as networking and marketing, the students formulated a plan for advertising and marketing.

After a quick lunch at the South Street Seaport mall, the group welcomed a guest-speaker, Ipshita, who is a professor at Pace University’s Graduate School. With her came one of her former students, whom she spoke and enlightened us with her knowledge. Ipshita’s presentation included a few exercises, which confirmed her explanations about marketing and networking. Then, under Ipshita’s professional supervision, the class broke up into three small groups to brainstorm coffee-related names for the store; all while sampling cookies from a local baker at “This Chick Bakes”.

Finally, as the day died down and the students were getting tired, each small group derived three name choices, which were narrowed down by a democratic voting process. The final three names were “The Battle of the Beans”, “Whipped”, and “The Jumping Bean”. Upon the final vote, “The Jumping Bean” was unanimously voted as the name for our new espresso bar.