Young entrepreneurs launch store

LINCOLN — Armed with a federal grant and a dose of enthusiasm, a group of high school students plans to open a collection of businesses in a small Sand Hills town that touts itself as “too tough to die.”

The hallmark business in Cody, Neb., population 149, will be a grocery store, which hasn’t existed in the remote ranching community in almost a decade.

Right now, the closest supermarket is 37 miles away, down winding U.S. Highway 20 in Valentine.

The business incubator project grew out of discussions about how to attract more young families to the community, and thus increase enrollment at the Cody-Kilgore school.

But the project’s larger benefit will be teaching entrepreneurial skills to the students, such as writing and executing business plans, marketing and retailing, according to Stacey Adamson, a teacher who is on the store steering committee.

“This will be real-life learning for the kids,” Adamson said. “Because we’re a very remote, rural community, there’s not an opportunity to work in a store.”

Entrepreneurship is a buzzword in education these days, she said, especially in rural areas, where jobs created by local entrepreneurs are viewed as a key in stemming population decline.

The Nebraska Department of Education and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, as well as the Center for Rural Affairs, are providing assistance in Cody through their entrepreneur programs.

The students plan to have a small market open by spring, with a couple of side businesses there as well. One student plans to sell farm-fresh eggs and another, espressos and smoothies.

“I know we have no room for failure. This is going to be a success,” said Chelsea Fullerton, a 17-year-old senior at Cody-Kilgore High School and member of the steering committee. She wrote a business plan for a grocery store in Cody four years ago as an FFA project.

The idea was patterned after a grocery store started by students in another Sand Hills town, Arthur, nine years ago. The Wolf Den Market there now employs two workers and has moved to a new building that is nearly twice the size of the original location, an old house.

The Cody project recently received a $75,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development program. Community members have pledged $10,000 in money and work to help fashion a store inside a local gas station, Cody Oil.

A full-time manager will be required to run the business, which will be staffed by students when they aren’t in class.

Among those working with the project is Joy Marshall, who helped start the Arthur grocery store. She now works for the Center for Rural Affairs, which wrote the grant for Cody.

But how realistic is a grocery store in such a small, remote town?

Adamson said she thinks it can work.

The last grocery store died, in part, because it didn’t have enough sales to qualify for deliveries from a grocery wholesaler. Adamson said the new store will be working through Scotty’s Ranchland Foods in Valentine to obtain products.

As a student-run business with equipment purchases via grants and donations, there won’t be the pressure to turn a profit and service a large debt, she said.

“If we can pay a manager and break even, we’ll be happy,” Adamson said. “This is an educational experience.”

Contact the writer:

402-473-9584, paul.hammel@owh.com