Young Enterprise Regional Final
I was honoured to be invited to attend the Staffordshire regional finals of the Young Enterprise company awards last night. I have had the pleasure of being a Business Advisor to year 11’s at The Friary School in Lichfield over the last couple of years (although I was a less frequent visitor this year). This year, the Friary students team “Simply Cooking” won the Lichfield and Tamworth event, and last night was their opporunity to compete at the Regional Finals.
Young Enterprise involves the children (young adults) setting up and running their own company for a year. It is a real company too - with bank accounts, properly registered with directors etc. The team have to decide on a product or service which they can promote and sell during the year. This year “Simply Cooking” my team from The Friary decided to write and publish a Recipe Book. They contacted celebrity chefs who agreed to supply some of the recipes. We helped them with sourcing the print at the best price to keep their overheads down (we didn’t make on the deal by the way!)
Last nights event was held at the presigous head quarters of JCB in Staffordshire. They provided a wonderful setting (they have their own conference theatre) for the 6 teams to do their presentations. All the teams did remarkably well in from of approximately 200 guests. Simply Cooking came second overall and won the “Most Entrepreneurial Team” award sponsored by the Federation of Small Business.
I look forward to working with next years students and trying to emulate their success.
Steve Rushton
Tags: awards, Federation of Small Business, simply cooking, young enterprise