I was talking to my good friend dahCACK about my whole goal for having a business and well she had mentioned something I had already planned to do should I ever have an actual brick and mortar store: student friendly seating.

I am very big on education. You can’t be the grandchild of educators without learning and reading being a very big deal in your house. I grew up loving school. To this day, I’ve only had three teachers I hated with a passion. To you three, I say, you’re not very good teachers and it’s unfortunate that you went into the profession.

Should my sweet, sweet business take off, I’m going to open a storefront that is more student lounge than candy shop. Sure, I’ll sell the sweets in the back, but I won’t be making sammies or beverages or anything else. There’ll be lots of tables and chairs and a few easy chairs and lots of plugs. I want two rentable medium sized rooms for group studying and those weird crafting meet ups. The rules of conduct would be painted on the wall:

1. Please be neat and clean up after yourself. This isn’t your house, we’re not your parents.
2. Don’t be too rowdy. We will kick your ass out. People are studying, damnit.
3. We don’t mind if you spend hours here, but if it’s full, please choose your seating accordingly. We mean, don’t be that one guy at a table for four in a packed room. And if you HAVE to be that guy, be nice and at least offer to share the table. Make a friend or something.
4. Rental space, the internet, and electricity aren’t cheap. Please donate so that we can stay open!

The problem with a student lounge is figuring how to keep it running, financially, while still being affordable for people who have little income or are still mooching off of their parents. What I want to be able to do is change the password of the wi-fi daily and then charge a small fee for the code. I’m thinking a dollar. But then you always have that one guy who will buy it and then share the code with everyone else. I wonder if I could have it so that I could generate a unique code per purchase. Like a one time use code that has a 6 hour expiration.

I want the store to be open until 11PM or later, as long I’m there making sweets, I’ll keep it open for students. Or I might just open it late and keep it open late, like a 12-12 deal. I also want to hire a big, scary, yet surprisingly sensitive guy to work nights, just in case creepers decide to hang around. Or a sweet looking, yet short tempered aggressive girl, but I already have a friend like that, so if this happens and you’re in need of a crappy paying job, you know who to call ❤

I also want to do lots of different discounts and two different membership thingies. I’d want a $10/month student interwebs deal where you show your card and you’d get the internet code and a 5% discount on all items sold there. The other membership would be $25/year for a 10% discount on all items, you know for all those people who don’t need to study. I want to have an extra 5% discount once a month for teachers and nurses (with proof of course and on different days) which would stack with the membership. I also want to do a graduation special… like 50% off all handmade sweets if you show a diploma or acceptance letter to college. Oh and I want to do a 25% discount for all the oldies who can show me their senior portraits/senior yearbooks during this time. Why? Because I love old yearbooks.

In the store, there’d be two tip jars and a special scholarship sweet. One tip jar would be for the employees and the other would be for the three scholarships which would be given to local students. A portion of the sweet’s $$$ would be donated to said fund. I want to start three different scholarships for local residents. I’ll handpick all the people, hopefully with the help of the people who inspired the scholarships.

• The Kuya Nursing Scholarship – For students in our local community college who are in the nursing program there (where my brother graduated)
  
• The Ahtee’s Starving Artist Scholarship – For any local students accepted into an art school/university, including any fashion and cooking schools
• The I Just Want to Learn, Dammit Scholarship – For local students just going to higher education.

I want to sell packaged foods and drinks that would help with learning… like energy drinks and artisan brain foods. In terms of my sweets, I’m probably already going to be theme-ing them… but I won’t tell you guys the ideas, don’t want you more talented people to take my ideas! :p I’d also like to have a gifts corner where local people can sell their wares or maybe do a crafty craft fair or something.

Right now this is just a pipe dream, but OH MY GOD, what a pipe dream to have. If one of you wins the lottery, can you give me some money to fulfill this dream? It’d be amazing and a great investment for the students of my area.