Two seniors at Blue Mountain High School with an idea for a health food restaurant and meal prep service business were named the grand prize winners at the first Ignite Schuylkill Youth business competition Thursday night.
Six business ideas were pitched at the youth version of the business competition that last year awarded $100,000 to The Farm Store, which opened earlier this year in downtown Pottsville.
While the goal of the youth version of Ignite Schuylkill isn’t necessarily to get the students who competed this year to open a business – at least, not right away – it was designed to hone their entrepreneurial skills.
Alexandra Warke and Delaney Burns wowed a panel of judges who heard their pitch for BlissBerry. By winning the competition, they were each awarded $5,000 in scholarship money.
“I’m very proud of the work we put in. I’m very satisfied with the reward,” Warke said following the event.
For Burns, the scholarship money is great but there was an added bonus to going through the Ignite course for the past several months.
“I definitely think I would do it over,” Burns said. “I think more so because of the connections I built even more so than the funding.”
Warke plans to attend Shippensburg University after graduation and will double major in accounting and finance. Burns will attend Duquesne University, majoring in early education with a minor in accounting.
Those majors may not immediately lend themselves to running a business like BlissBerry but each said it’s a possibility after college.
Both said “it’s definitely a strong possibility” that they could one day open BlissBerry.
“We would definitely want to be entirely focused on it and I think it wouldn’t be realistic for us to try to manage it from far away,” Burns said. “We would definitely wait until we’re out of school and back at home.”
Burns said BlissBerry was an idea she’s had since middle school. When the opportunity for Ignite presented itself, she roped in Warke to help.
“Alex has always been very entrepreneurial and I kind of dragged her into it with me,” Burns said. “She jumped on and we both became very passionate.
Warke and Burns and others who competed in Thursday’s final event first endured a 16-week entrepreneurial course alongside a business mentor. At the end, they were required to create three deliverables: a full business plan, a proforma, and a breakdown of their startup costs.
Each business idea was presented to a packed house at the Orwigsburg Veterans Memorial.
Although Warke and Burns walked away with the grand prize, none of the other five finalists walked away empty-handed.
Keeshaun King, a junior at Pottsville Area High School, presented his pitch for King’s Fitness, a hybrid boxing and strength training program, which he currently operates.
Judges awarded him $2,000 for a boxing certificate program.
Carson Farber, a junior at Tamaqua Area High School, told the crowd about his idea for Market Yourself, a marketing agency designed to be accessible to smaller businesses.
Farber won $2,000 for expenses while attending Lehigh Carbon Community College. If Farber decides to continue his education at Alvernia University, he’ll also receive $10,000 in tuition reimbursement.
Aiyana George, a junior at Pine Grove Area High School and Schuylkill Technology Center, shared her idea for It’s Not Just a Phase salon.
George was given a $3,000 scholarship to Empire Beauty School.
Kira Nagle, a senior at Gillingham Charter School, said she wanted to turn her work as a barista into a business she’s calling Simone’s Cafe.
She was awarded $5,000 in flex money to help her establish her business and tuition for the adult version of the Ignite course.
And Ali Alolaki, 16, and a student at Mahanoy Area High School and Schuylkill Technology Center, presented his idea for New York Deli food truck, a spin-off of his family’s business in Mahanoy City.
He won $2,500 worth of business counseling from the O’Pake Institute for Economic Development and Entrepreneurship at Alvernia University plus $3,000 in flex money for his proposed food truck and tuition reimbursement for the Ignite course at the adult level.
In the Fall, there are plans to launch another round of Ignite Schuylkill, for both adults and students, according to Savas Logothetides, who serves as the program manager for the event.
Logothetides says that 30% of people who’ve completed the Ignite Schuylkill or Launch Pottsville entrepreneurial courses since they started have gone on to start their own business.
And although the students who competed Thursday are under no obligation to start the businesses they pitched, he said of their experience going through the course, “They’re charting their future.”
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