Success is sweet, and it tastes like creamy, fudge-laced cappuccino sprinkled with crunchy bits of chocolate.
Seven Colorado high school students collaborated to create Black Kat as the October Spoonbender flavor of the month for Colorado branches of Good Times Burgers & Frozen Custard.
The students were participants in the Junior Achievement Business Week summer session, hosted last summer at Johnson & Wales University. The team competed against nine other student teams assigned to create a mix-in dessert that also strictly obeyed business development confines.
“It surprised me that we had to incorporate the cost of everything – the plastic cup’s cost, the napkin and the spoon, along with the ingredients – and it all adds up,” said Derek Dash, a gangly Denver School of Science and Technology senior.
Originally, the students wanted to use fluffy bits of nougat in their concoction. They switched to crushed KitKat bars – Horizon High School senior Arianna Trosper’s suggestion – after calculating the nougat was beyond their budget.
Akeelah Harrell, a Brighton High School senior, came up with adding cappuccino flavoring, an idea the others immediately endorsed as appropriate for their targeted market of customers 16 to 29 years old.
“We figured cappuccino is what people like to wake them up,” said Ruchika Agrawal, a CEC Middle College senior.
Teammate Dash took that literally. On the first day of October, when the Black Kat Spoonbender went on the market, he showed up at 7:30 a.m. at the Good Times nearest his house, intending to order one for breakfast. (Nutrition police, relax: Good Times doesn’t open that early. Dash had to wait until after school for his pick-me-up.)
Sonja Bistranin, a Dakota Ridge High School sophomore, was relieved that her Junior Achievement group was assigned to come up with a dessert flavor. Another group was tasked to sell iced tea.
“I, personally, would rather work with ice cream,” she said.
