Who would buy Tea Squares? A millennial? Who’s very active?

Different scribbles—drawn by the upper school Social Entrepreneurship class—cover the whiteboard near the library’s makerspace, mapping out the person who will pick up a packet of Tea Squares as they leave a Mariano’s store this January.

While the class munches on Tea Squares, a bite-sized snack made out of puffed millet and infused with tea, upper school Social Entrepreneurship teacher Annette Lesak outlines the lesson of the day. The eight students enrolled in Social Entrepreneurship are given the opportunity to work with CEO and founder of Tea Squares, Jordan Buckner, as well as expand their knowledge on outreach and customer database.

Although currently Tea Squares is sold in 11 Whole Foods stores across the city, Buckner recently made a deal with Mariano’s to sell Tea Squares at the checkout lanes in around 40 stores beginning this January. Buckner was also recognized as one of Forbes’s 2018 “30 under 30.”

Enter Parker. The eight students signed up for this elective went beyond 330 W. Webster to talk to people, do taste tests, and understand different customer personas for Tea Squares in and about the city. “A lot of the workload is self assigned,” Lesak said, “so they decide what they want to do to make their business a reality.”

The class began some weeks ago diving into “design thinking” as an approach to business development. Design thinking involves finding a problem, understanding how people are affected by the problem, and brainstorming a solution to fix it. Data and research are collected by hearing feedback from people and trying to understand their experiences. “It’s a separate learning technique from business itself,” Lesak said, “but it goes in nicely with a business model canvas.”

In the midst of explaining a business model for pollinating microbots—which are meant to act as bees and pollinate plants—senior Olivia Mayores reflected on the course. “I didn’t know this class existed until last year,” she said, “so I’m glad that Parker offers an elective in learning more about business.”

Once they collected their information in an organized manner, Entrepreneurship students presented their findings to Buckner himself–insights into ways to better benefit the company. “He was always one step ahead,” senior Chloe Wagner said. “If we suggested to expand on some social media platform, he’d tell us about the person who is currently working on that project.”

This is Lesak’s first year teaching the class, and over the summer she attended a workshop at Hawken School, which she described as “the Parker of Cleveland.” “The purpose of this class is to teach students to use your business as a means to give back to society,” Lesak said, “which is where the ‘social’ comes in in ‘social entrepreneurship.’”

Tea Squares strives to do just that. At their headquarters in Englewood, Tea Squares offers a three-month fellowship program for at-risk youth. According to the Tea Squares website, the program “is part of a rising effort based on one of the tenets of the Good Food movement. Food businesses can play a catalytic role in restoring economic vitality to struggling communities, both urban and rural.”

As students begin working on their own business models—their final project for the semester-long elective—using the skills and lessons learnt from working with Tea Squares, Lesak is encouraging her students to center their business ideas around giving back.

“Yeah–you can make a ton of money, you can have a successful business,” Lesak said, “but it is so important that you are using your business to give back to the community or that you are bettering society in some way.”