Student Entrepreneurship & Good Eats: Meeting the Needs of Our Community

Contributors: Jack Freeman ’21 and Osman Yousufi ’21

At LCS, our vision is to inspire teenagers to become leaders who care, connect, and contribute. When students have a passion for a particular issue, we encourage them to learn more and pursue their interests. It’s no surprise that when LCS students Jack Freeman ’21 and Osman Yousufi ’21 started LCS Eats in December 2020, their community of students supported them wholeheartedly. 

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Jack and Osman along with Owen Leung ’21, Matt Northey ’21, Scott Doggett ’21, Christian Levec ’21, and Aidan Maltman ’21 created LCS Eats – a (very) localized version of UberEats to deliver food to their peers on campus. Students in the leadership class realized that the winter blues were starting to strike and with covid restrictions in place, they and their friends were unable to leave campus to enjoy a meal at a local restaurant.

This is when the idea of a food delivery service emerged. The students created a plan to receive and process orders, pick up food (safely), and then deliver it to their customers. Boarding students collect orders during the day outside the Student Learning Centre. Day students (who leave the campus in the evenings) pick up the food orders after class and bring them back to campus to be delivered to their clientele.

This venture “seemed simple and straightforward at first,” said Jack. However, the LCS Eats team soon realized that taking and fulfilling orders on a daily basis required a lot of planning and organization. The students operate like a small business, using spreadsheets to create a menu and outline costs (including the price for the food, tax, and delivery fees), scheduling order times, arranging delivery times, and managing customer requests.

The LCS Eats team now places orders for three restaurants in town – McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and Tim Hortons and accepts orders on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Their current business model relies on in-person orders, placed on campus. In the coming weeks, they hope to expand to phone orders and eventually an app-based ordering system, which will provide more students with access to off-campus food options.

Luke Burri ’22 had the idea for an app in his Grade 11 Intro to Computer Science class, which he took last fall. The knowledge required to design and build this app exceeded the course curriculum and now his peer, Scott Doggett ’21 is picking up the baton and will be completing the app for his AP Create Task as a part of Grade 12 Computer Science. Scott is currently developing a prototype and mockups in code; he aims to complete this project by the end of March 2021.

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When discussing their mission for LCS Eats, Jack and Osman touched on the winter blues they had noticed in December and said, “Most of the reason we want to do it is because wellbeing and mental health can be a problem. We wanted to do something to bring peoples’ spirits up.” Although it’s an entrepreneurial venture, the LCS Eats team is driven by improving the wellbeing of students at school by offering a service that can brighten their day. “It gives people something to look forward to,” the boys said.

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We look forward to seeing their business venture evolve over the next few months and in the meantime, if you’re looking for a tasty meal, place your order at the SLC!