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Why this coffee chain is opening stores in high schools

From taking orders to filing taxes, students working at campus-based PJ’s Coffee franchises are gaining valuable vocational skills.

Why this coffee chain is opening stores in high schools

[Photo: courtesy PJ’s Coffee]

BY Nate Berg4 minute read

The high school students working at PJ’s Coffee in Walker, Louisiana, are like many teenagers around the country who are getting their first work experience at a chain restaurant. Pouring cups of coffee and stirring lattes, they’re dipping their toes in the real world of jobs and employment that awaits them once their schooling is finished.

But unlike most of those other kids in entry-level jobs, the Walker High School students are working at PJ’s as part of their formal education. Located in a small town outside Baton Rouge, their school is one of a small but growing number of high schools around the country that have set up PJ’s Coffee franchises. The operation of the store, from filling coffee cups to sweeping floors to filing taxes, is all handled by student workers. The coffee shop is seen as a modern-day version of the vocational training school—like a 21st-century shop class.

[Photo: courtesy PJ’s Coffee]

“They learn inventory, marketing, advertising, customer service, soft skills, and they learn how to make coffee,” says Jason St. Pierre, principal at Walker High School. “In essence we are training baristas in high school so they can go to work once they graduate from high school.”

PJ’s Coffee has more than 150 locations, primarily in the Southern U.S., and almost all of them are conventional fast-food-style operations, drive-through and all. But along with the location at Walker High, the company has about half a dozen other locations on public and private high school campuses. The first opened at a Louisiana high school once attended by PJ’s owners.

Tori Bermond, franchise development manager, helps potential franchisees get set up to operate their own PJ’s Coffee location. Even she is somewhat surprised by the interest she’s seeing from high schools. It’s a long leap from the cafeteria fare she remembers from high school. “We certainly didn’t have access to lattes and cappuccinos,” she says.

But Bermond argues that bringing a coffee chain to a high school is not about hooking new caffeine addicts in a captive environment. It’s an amenity, for sure, but it’s also a real functioning business that students can learn from the inside out. “It’s a way for them to really incorporate the education piece with the service piece,” she says.

St. Pierre sees the PJ’s outlet at Walker High as part of a much-needed revolution in high school education. About 83% of Louisiana students graduate from high school, and about 56% enroll in college. “What are we doing with the other half?” he asks. “What are we doing to prepare them?”

The PJ’s at Walker High School is an attempt to offer that preparation. This is its third year in operation, with mostly special education students enrolled. There are three open times during every school day, for the hour or so before and after school and also during lunch. About 35 students work these shifts, which are treated like any other credit-earning class. The shop can take orders through an app, and staffers can deliver drinks to faculty or parents dropping off students in the morning. (Deliveries to students are not allowed.)

The campus has a wide range of student-run businesses and occupational training programs in addition to PJ’s, according to St. Pierre, including a Papa John’s pizza shop, a credit union, a Nike Store, a sports medicine clinic, a TV station that broadcasts in nine Louisiana parishes, pharmacy technician and medical assistant training programs, a real estate academy, firefighting certification courses, a paint and body shop, a welding shop, an electrical shop, and a carpentry shop. “I’m probably leaving out a couple more,” St. Pierre says, “but you get the point.”

While the businesses operating on campus do generate some revenue, St. Pierre says the true benefit is offering students a variety of options for testing out their interests and learning relevant skills for the future. “All the kids across the spectrum, whether they’re special needs or they’re going to Harvard, we can service them,” he says.

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As for any concerns about high schools becoming too commercialized, St. Pierre counters that students are already exposed to the ways capitalism shapes society. “It’s in their faces already. They’re on their phones, every time you play a YouTube video you’ve got a commercial hitting your face,” he says. “We’re a capitalist country. You’re going to go work in this capitalist culture. So we expose them to that while they’re in high school. It’s about opportunity, it’s not just about capitalism.”

For PJ’s, the economic returns are minor, according to Bermond. High school locations pay a discounted franchise fee of $15,000. (Bermond estimates it costs schools about $50,000 total to set up a store.)

“For us it’s less about the money. At the end of the day, these are very low-volume stores, so we’re not making very much on royalties,” she says. “What matters to us is the learning component, and being able to provide these kids with options and the ability to learn these skills at a young age that they can then go implement at their first job or as their career.”

St. Pierre sees the on-campus PJ’s and all the other trade- and business-focused programs as ways to make high school more relevant to the modern world. “We have to redesign high school,” he says. “Schools ought to be a conduit, from school to work or school to school, whatever you plan on doing.”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nate Berg is a staff writer at Fast Company, where he writes about design, architecture, urban development, and industrial design. He has written for publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, Wired, the Guardian, Dwell, Wallpaper, and Curbed More


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