One Fort Lauderdale ice cream shop is getting ready to host a special limited-edition flavor.
Yo Mama's Ice Cream on Fort Lauderdale Beach teamed up with Nova Southeastern University two months ago to help high schoolers in Broward County develop and market their own sugary concoctions.
Now it's time to sell the stuff.
From 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, the winning group of students from NSU's Ice Cream Entrepreneurship Program will be scooping and selling the flavor that won over a panel of business judges. It’s called Chocolate Wake-Up Call.
"It’s a vanilla ice cream base, with coffee grinds, some caramel, some brownies, and a few chocolate chips just to give it a little crunchiness," Yo Mama’s co-founder Lee Feldman said. The entrepreneurship program, which is in its second year, hosted high schoolers from 14 different Broward schools in July. Assistant Professor of Communications Stephen Andon taught them how to make, market, brand, promote, and sell the ice cream flavors that they came up with.
"To see somebody from sketching out their idea, to seeing it actually being scooped and presented - a real product that people can come and buy and enjoy - I love it," he said.
Mandi Jaffe is one of the students who participated, and helped come up with Chocolate Wake-Up Call. She's a junior, and already taking some classes focused on hospitality, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
"We marketed it, so we did like a whole poster and then we set a pitch, which did we a speech and presentation," she said.
Now that it’s time to see her creation in a real store?"It’s gonna be pretty cool," she said. No pun intended.
Andon said he hoped the students would gain some insight into the world of professional communications by providing the free program through the college of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.
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"I think a lot of high school students - if they were like me in high school - they’re not really sure what they want to do," he said. "So exposing them to a community-based local business… and showing them some of the skills they would learn as a communications major, gives them a little bit of taste of something that they weren’t really sure of."
Andon said it’s not hard to get students to focus on how to create a marketing plan when ice cream is involved.
"There are no complaints when it comes to the testing and tasting," he said.
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