Real Bright Ideas: Long Street Coffee

Key words: social enterprise, ethics, communication, business

The purpose of this lesson plan is to allow students to explore the content of the Real Bright Ideas (Long Street Coffee) video in more depth, taking into consideration ideas about social enterprise, ethical principles, communication, and transforming business ideas into reality.

Class grouping: Pairs, Whole Class, Individual
Time: 60 minutes

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See video transcript here.

Teacher Instructions

Activity: Social Enterprise Menu

PREPARATION AND MATERIALS:

• Access to the internet
• Coloured cards (optional)
• 1 x ‘menu’ example for each student (or project the image for the class)

Process

PART 1 Research in pairs

Ask students to find a partner. Give them 5-10 minutes to research the term ‘social enterprise’. What does it mean? What is an example of a social enterprise and how does it work?

Optional:

Distribute a coloured card (see Appendix I) to three students of your choice. The purpose of the cards is to allow you to invite students who may not ordinarily participate in class to contribute their ideas. You can also distribute all the cards as an incentive to students to prepare a cohesive answer, or to allow a spread of contributors across gender identities.

PART 2 Reporting back

• Ask students (with cards if you have used them) to contribute their ideas about social enterprise and write them or type and project them onto the board.
• If you have a digital class page you could ask students to post their answers there. Clarify any difficult or complex terms that have arisen.

PART 3 Choose Your Issue

• Ask students to prepare a ‘menu’ outlining how they would go about conceiving their own social enterprise café (example of layout in AppendixII). To prepare the menu, students must choose an area of social justice to research in depth.
• You may wish to provide your students with some examples of issues that fall under the umbrella of social justice, or give them the option of selecting an issue themselves. Examples:
  * Animal rights
  * Gender equality
  * Homelessness
  * Access to health care
  * Access to mental health services
  * Environmental degradation
  * Violence against women
  * Aboriginal rights
  * Treatment of people seeking asylum and refugees
  * Disability rights
  * LGBTQIA+ rights

PART 4 Planning the menu

• Inform students that their menu should be laid out like the one shown in the ‘Bright Ideas’ video, with each item accompanied by a price to mimic an authentic café menu.
• Ensure that students are thorough with their research. They should distil their information into pithier menu items, with each item reflecting a thorough understanding of the issue under investigation. Students should submit their full research materials alongside their completed ‘menu’.
• Encourage students to be creative, inventing flavours or dishes that reflect the different elements of their business. They could use puns, celebrity names, unusual flavours and so on to get their message across!

The menu must include:

1. A name for their business at the top of the menu
2. Menu items that:
   a) Detail the issue their enterprise is hoping to address (this response will require multiple ‘dishes’)
   b) Summarise the purpose of their business.
   c) Outline where their profits will go
   d) Detail why they are promoting or supporting an idea
   e)Outline the projected outcomes of their business
   f) Outline the difficulties the business may encounter

Alternative:

Offer students the option to approach the task in a more literal way. Students’ ideas should still be laid out as if they are on a menu, but rather than creatively rephrasing their ideas as ‘dishes’, their initial research and responses to the questions should be listed as menu items.

Extension activity:

Ask students to devise a budget for their business. Budget items could be added as ‘specials’ to the menu, with the price reflecting the predicted cost for rent, marketing, staffing, stock and fit-out.

Example menu:

Image designed by Breanna Botterill, Fitzroy Feminist Collective

Student Instructions

Activity: Social Enterprise Menu

Task:

After watching Rosie’s ‘Bright Ideas: Long St. Coffee’ video your task is to create a mock café with a ‘social justice’ menu, modelled on the café menu from Long St cafe. The menu will outline your ideas about how to address an issue of social justice in your community.

Instructions:

PART 1 What are you passionate about?

Reflecting on your class discussion about the concept of ‘social enterprise’, choose an area of social justice to research in depth. You may already be interested in a particular social justice issue, but if not, choose one from the list below:

* Animal rights
* Gender equality
* Homelessness
* Access to health care
* Access to mental health services
* Environmental degradation
* Violence against women
* Aboriginal rights
* Treatment of people seeking asylum and refugees

PART 2 Research

Now that you have chosen your issue, your task is to research it in depth. You must:

1. Provide a thorough explanation of what the issue is
2. Detail the historical and contemporary factors that have contributed to the issue
3. Suggest how the issue could be addressed
4. Outline why it’s important to address the issue

PART 3 Making a difference

a) Now that you have a sound understanding of the social justice issue
you have chosen, the next step is to consider how your café is going
to help address it. For example:

• Will you raise awareness of the issue?
• Will you raise funds to assist those whom it affects?
• Will you employ people who are affected by the issue?

b) Once you have decided on your approach, you will need to:

• Summarise the purpose of your business: how will your café help to address the issue?
• Outline where your profits will go
• Write a short sentence for your customers that explains why you are promoting or supporting an idea
• Outline the projected outcomes of their business: what do you hope to achieve?
• Outline any difficulties the business may encounter

PART 4 Create your menu

Now that you have gathered all the information you need about your issue of choice and how you are going to address the problem, it’s time to create a menu for your café!

You will need to break your information down into short sentences so that it will fit into a menu format. Have a look at the example menu provided for ideas about how to do that.

Your menu must include:

1. A name for your business
2. Menu items that:
   a) Detail the issue your enterprise is hoping to address (this may
   require multiple ‘dishes’)
   b) Summarise the purpose of your business.
   c) Outline where your profits will go
   d) Detail why you are promoting or supporting an idea
   e) Outline the projected outcomes of your business
   f) Outline the difficulties your business may encounter

PART 5 Some tips!

• Make sure that each item on your menu is accompanied by a price so it looks like a real café menu.
• Be creative! Invent flavours or dishes that reflect the different elements of your business. You could use puns, celebrity names, unusual flavours etc. to get your message across.
• Hand in both your research and your menu to your teacher

Extension activity:

If you have time, come up with a basic budget for your business. Add your budgeted meals to the menu as ‘specials’. You could outline costs for rent, marketing your business, employing staff, buying stock and fitting your café out with furniture etc. The name of the special dish should include the budget item and the price should reflect its cost.

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