Business & Finance students at South and City College Birmingham, who are currently completing Level 3 qualifications (BTecs and T Levels), have combined healthy living habits with enterprise acumen to build a successful business by selling smoothies from a fleet of bikes.
Dalbir Kaur, Birmingham-based entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of the health app
Makemefitclub, has been mentoring the students and teaching them key transferrable skills, such as communication, problem-solving, and teamwork.S
This has evolved into a standalone business project. Together, Kaur and the students have
launched smoothie bike business – Super Smoothies – to encourage students to convert their classroom education into real-world opportunities. The smoothie blenders are powered by pedalling the bikes, providing a cost-effective, healthy, and sustainable business concept.
Kaur has worked with the students on the business concept, to conduct market research,
develop the project, set performance goals, build the business case, and convert their strategy into a viable product. She has also provided ongoing support with designing the campaigns, reviewing the business plan, and assessing the costings and profit margins.
Two bikes were initially purchased for the College’s Digbeth Campus, where the students first started selling smoothies. Following the success of these first investments, a further two bikes were purchased for operation at the Bournville and Hall Green campuses.
The enterprise is run and staffed entirely by the students, who regularly bring the bikes to
events across the College campuses.
The students have also had the opportunity to promote the initiative beyond the College, by taking the bikes out to local businesses. South and City College Birmingham has longstanding relationships with employers across Birmingham and throughout the West Midlands, and this initiative has helped its students to develop networking skills and build relationships with local business leaders, to raise their profiles for future employment opportunities.
Any sales generated go back into funding the initiative, so that they and future students can continue to benefit and learn from the enterprise. A portion of the revenue is also donated to the College’s partner charities, including Birmingham Children’s Hospital. To date, the initiative has raised nearly £500 for charity.
Dalbir Kaur, founder and CEO of the app Makemefitclub, said: “It has been an absolute pleasure to work with South and City College Birmingham on this latest venture, which has enabled students with an entrepreneurial mindset to execute their business vision.
“As a Birmingham-based start-up, we are extremely passionate about helping young people locally. We’ve also placed several of the students within our business on both short and long-term placements, to help them gain experience in launching well-being events and executing marketing campaigns, as well as being a part of boardroom meetings.
“Makemefitclub is proud of our continued partnership with the College, to further bridge the gap between the classroom and the professional environment. Not only has it added to our
workforce and driven our business forward, but it also gives our students professional skills and clarity before they embark on their careers.”
Kaussar Bashir, Faculty Head of Creative and Professional Studies at South and City College Birmingham, commented: “I’m incredibly proud of the success that our students have generated from this initiative. Birmingham is Europe’s youngest city, and it also has one of the UK’s fastest-growing economies. There’s so much to offer, and we want our students to have every opportunity to capitalise on this. It’s also important to us that they feel supported in their journey through to employment, further and higher education, and that they know that their talents and skills are the “skills and talent of tomorrow” and are valued by employers that will employ them. The key thing for us as educators is making them believe that they can do it.
“At South and City College Birmingham, we are interested in where our students can go and achieve – not where they’re from – and how we can give them the best platform to make it happen.
“We believe that studying should go beyond the curriculum – it’s also about enriching the lives of our learners. And our smoothie bikes are just one of a range of initiatives that we have in place to help our students develop both practical and soft skills in and outside of the classroom.”
Enrolment for 2023/4 higher education enrolment begins on Thursday 24th August 2023.
For more information on enrolment, prospective students can visit: www.sccb.ac.uk/enrol
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