Two Salmon Arm Secondary School wanted to install a vending machine with healthy snacks for students

Photo: Contributed

School District 83 officials have turned down a business offer from two students.

Grade 12 students Tianna Shefsky and Austin Beasley wanted to bring healthier snacks to Salmon Arm Secondary School, so last month they pitched a business proposal to district trustees.

The students wanted to bring in a vending machine with healthy snacks and beverages.

“They will look after the machine daily and have offered the school a 10 per cent share of the revenue,” a staff report to the SD83 board stated.

“They said the opportunity will change their lives and enhance their educational experience. They feel it will also help inspire other students to be entrepreneurs.”

In their written proposal to the board, the students said their goal “is to provide an easy, stress-free profit” for the school district.

However, at their recent meeting, board members said “the pitch was great” and the students “did a wonderful job, and that they admired their entrepreneurial spirit, but the vending machine proposal was probably not the right fit for the school district.”

A few of the concerns raised by trustees were by the time the approval process was complete - which would include having to present to the school PAC - the two students would virtually be finished Grade 12.

It was also noted there were new Ministry of Health guidelines coming down which will affect what is sold in vending machines, and trustees didn't want the students to be in the situation where they would have put up all the upfront costs for the machine and then perhaps be unable to continue under the new stricter guidelines.

It was suggested that perhaps, after the guidelines were known, the board could put forward some seed money and an entrepreneurial class at the school could manage the machine so that it was a learning project.