BROWNSTOWN
Ever since Austin Fleetwood joined DECA his sophomore year at Brownstown Central High School, he has been all business.
From participating in club activities to working at the coffee shop to attending conferences, he has been as active as possible.
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Click here to purchase photos from this gallery“Once I got into my sophomore year, I really had a passion for it, so I was willing to do anything for it,” Fleetwood said.
Now a senior, he remains devoted to the organization and wants to ensure it will continue to be successful after he graduates.
Last summer, he began the process of putting a 30-page paper together in hopes that the school-based coffee shop Brewed Awakening would earn gold certification from DECA Inc.
DECA, which stands for Distributive Education Clubs of America, is a career and technical student organization composed of more than 215,000 students who are interested in careers in marketing, entrepreneurship, finance, hospitality or management.
In the paper, he had to show how the shop meets 10 indicators of a business: Financial analysis, operations, marketing information management, market planning, product service management, pricing, distribution/channel management, promotion, selling and human resources management.
On Nov. 9, he finished the paper a few days before it was due.
Fortunately, all of the work and effort paid off. The school-based business was one of only three in Indiana to achieve gold certification for the first time this year in food operations. Only little more than 400 in the United States either became certified for the first time or recertified in food and retail operations.
Plus, Brownstown earned three spots to attend the DECA International Career Development Conference from April 27 to 30 in Orlando, Florida.
Sophomores Marley Hayes and Sydney Loudermilk and junior Kylene Spall will attend to make a presentation about Brewed Awakening and will participate in the school-based enterprise academy to bring back ideas for the coffee shop. Fleetwood, freshman Taylor Loudermilk and sophomore Carly Perry will attend Thrive Academy to allow them to learn more leadership skills.
When DECA adviser Robin Perry shared the news that the store was gold certified with the students, they experienced a variety of emotions.
“It’s like my heart just sank because sometimes, you might put a lot of effort into it, but you don’t always get something out of it,” Fleetwood said. “To know that we did and we put the work into it, it was amazing to feel that.”
It was extra-special because Brownstown’s DECA chapter, coffee shop and school are much smaller than the other two Indiana schools chosen — Snider in Fort Wayne and Brownsburg.
“The amount of people we have in our school is the amount of people they have in their entire DECA chapter, so it’s really cool for us to be able to do that because DECA instills in your mind that it’s limitless,” Fleetwood said. “You are limitless, and that shows that we are, and I really like that.”
All of the success Fleetwood has experienced with DECA has inspired him to major in business operations applications and technology and minor in accounting at Ivy Tech Community College once he finishes high school.
“I originally wanted to do forensic biology,” he said. “From the time I was in DECA to now, I’ve always been really involved, but once I got into leadership roles, I love it. I could sit and do this stuff for hours a day, and that’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.”
Brownstown DECA will receive a plaque at ICDC. The gold certification is for five years, and then the chapter will have to recertify.
For now, though, the members are reveling in the honor.
“I think it was a humongous accomplishment for not only our group but our school and our community,” Hayes said. “Having the privilege to be able to go (to ICDC) is amazing, and I’ve always dreamed of going basically since I’ve been in high school because last year, I wasn’t able to attend. It will actually be one of my first biggest traveling things for DECA. I’m excited to see what we can learn and bring back.”
Considering how much effort and work goes into managing the coffee shop, Loudermilk said it’s nice to be rewarded.
“To be able to be recognized for something like that, I think, was just amazing,” she said. “Furthermore, being able to go to this conference in Orlando will give us the opportunity to learn how we can grow those skills and how we can possibly take this business to the next level. I’m going and looking for all of the ideas that I can get. It’s just going to be an idea sponge whenever we’re down there in Orlando.”
Spall was a part of Perry’s class that started the coffee shop a year ago and attended ICDC last year.
“I got to see how big the DECA chapters are that have these shops, and it’s crazy,” she said. “We traveled to Carmel last year, and to see their coffee shop, I was like, ‘Our school is too little for that,’ but it’s crazy how much support we’ve had from our community for this.”
DECA members have learned a lot in a year’s time of operating the coffee shop.
It has always been open from 7:30 a.m. to 8:05 a.m. Monday through Friday during the school year and from 3 to 3:20 p.m. every school day but Wednesday. For the first two trimesters of this school year, since there has been a marketing class, students were available to run the shop from 10:40 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. during lunchtime.
Brewed Awakening also has been open during home basketball and football games, giving the community a chance to make purchases.
With the addition of the marketing class, the shop’s staff grew from about 15 students to nearly 60.
“Not only has it increased our productivity by being able to open during lunch, but whenever you get more people into it, you have so many new ideas and stuff that we don’t think of,” Fleetwood said.
The marketing class recently helped decorate the coffee shop to celebrate the gold certification, and students also have come up with new drinks for the menu.
“They do a trial basis on it and see if people would like it or not like it or how it will go over in the coffee shop,” Hayes said. “I think that’s pretty cool how they have so many ideas, and it’s good to bring all of those together.”
Students from a special needs class also help with the shop, doing dishes, cleaning up after hours and making lemonade.
Fleetwood said a portion of the proceeds from the shop go to the special needs class to go on field trips, while the rest is used to buy equipment and supplies and allow DECA members to travel to conferences and other events.
Brewed Awakening offers several flavors of hot coffee, cold coffee, slushies and lemonades and two flavors of smoothies. It also sells hot chocolate, muffins, cookies, brownies, chewing gum and beef sticks. And just recently, the shop started selling Orange Leaf frozen yogurt.
Besides looking forward to ICDC, Brownstown’s DECA chapter will have 11 members attending a state conference March 3 through 5 in Indianapolis.
In January, 14 members competed in a district competition and were eligible to go to state after placing in the top two of their category.
Nine of them chose to compete at state, where they will complete a 100-question test and a roleplay with a judge, vote on student leadership for next year’s state DECA team and attend leadership workshops.
Those students are Sydney Loudermilk, Rohlfing, Perry, Hayes, Taylor Loudermilk, Lily Abdulbari, Logan Miller, Alexis Markel and Kirsten Raisor.
Fleetwood and Spall also will go to state to present a chapter project on community service.
Between the gold certification and conference qualifications, Robin Perry said she is proud of the students.
“It’s all them. They did it all, and now, they are reaping the reward of all of that hard work, they really are,” she said. “Just to see (the coffee shop) go from $0 raised, nothing but an idea, in a year and a half to gold, that’s them, and that’s great. They’ve taken what they were working on and they’ve run with it, and they have achieved gold certification.”
The coffee shop just being a year old, the students could have just tried for silver or bronze, but Perry said the students wanted to go for gold.
“We heard back from DECA Inc. that our submission was impeccable, and that says a lot,” she said. “It’s nice having the validation from DECA Inc. that yes, we are doing as much as we can for this. We appreciate the community’s help and the donors that got us started and everybody’s help, and hopefully, we can show them that we’ve done well with it.”
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Brewed Awakening is a student-run coffee shop located in the cafeteria at Brownstown Central High School, 500 N. Elm St., Brownstown.
It’s open to students and staff members from 7:35 to 8:05 a.m. Mondays through Fridays and from 3 to 3:20 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
The menu includes cold coffee (iced or frappuccino), hot coffee, hot chocolate, smoothies, slushies, lemonades, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, muffins, chewing gum and beef sticks.
All items are $2 or less and meet school nutritional guidelines. Methods of payment include cash, credit card, debit card and Apple or Android Pay.
For information, find the business on Instagram (Brewed_Awakening__ or Twitter (@BrewedAwaken4).
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