As students rush into the chaos that is lunch at Troy High School, something appears to be missing; that something would be the school store. Although its presence seems to be trivial for now, the students who run The Colt Connection have been working to make the store even more productive and offer a greater variety of products for the upcoming year.

The Colt Connection is a part of the statewide marketing program. This includes co-op, which is getting class credit for having an outside job, DECA and the school store. Marketing teacher Heidi Rosenberg is in charge of all of these, making her unlike the typical teacher.

“We give students a lot of bookwork and homework from a textbook, but we do not teach them how to run a business,” Rosenberg said. “This give the students a hands-on experience.”

While Rosenberg is the teacher of the class, the students are the ones who make sure that the store runs. The students have to order the food, design the apparel and decide what to sell. If some product is not selling well, they have to decide whether to mark the price down and by how much.

Because the store is student run, it requires student leadership. There are three managers, one for each lunch, seniors Anna Middleton, Clare Keating and Ally Majewski. Between the three of them, there are many responsibilities such as setting up everything in the store, training the new employees and doing inventory at the end of every day.

“Everyone thinks that the school store is a blow-off class, but it actually is not because you get this huge packet every week that you have to fill out and it is due every Friday, which is when we also have a test,” Middleton said. “The tests are actually kind of hard.”

In addition to handling customers in the store, the store employees have to make sure that the room is always neat. They have to wash the cookies sheets, clean the ovens and ensure that everything is back in place by the time the store opens the next day, similar to a real store.

“It is fun,” Middleton said. “ You meet really cool people and everyone there is always really nice. I also find it kind of fun to work. Just like seeing everyone coming in and giving them a cookie or candy– it is just really fun to make people happy.”

Something new about the school store this year is the return of the “original” cookies. For two days of the week out of three weeks of the month, the Colt Connection will be allowed to be non-compliant. This means that the store can sell everything it was able to sell before the restrictive food regulations were put in place last year. This also means that the cookies and candy that was so popular before can be sold again now.

However, there is a catch. If there is a club or team selling Krispy Kreme donuts a day during the week, the school store would not be allowed to sell candy or cookies.

“That is going to be a little rough, but we will figure it out,” Middleton said.

While there are some different rules this year, the school store continues to be successful and something that many students look forward to.

“It is a really cool way to see your friends and stuff and give back to the school because all of the revenue from the school store goes right back to the school,” Majewski said. “It raises money for the school and it is rewarding in that way.”