Four Tips to Jumpstart Your Spirit Box Year
A new school year is on the way, which means a new year of operating Spirit Box! As the new year begins, we’ve compiled a few tips you can implement to help your team get off to a great start.
Seek Out Any New Food & Beverage Restrictions
Many schools have requirements about what can and can’t be sold on school grounds during certain school hours. You can ask your school business advisor or other members of administration for any lists that elaborate on what is and is not allowed to be sold. Making sure your team is aware of these restrictions can help ensure you don’t waste any time (or funding) on products that can’t be sold in your Spirit Box. It may have changed over the summer, so take the time to locate the latest list.
Got products that ended up being restricted? One solution you can try for restricted items includes the Timed Events functionality in each Spirit Box. This functionality allows you to sell certain items only at certain times. If an item is on the restricted list, you can sell those after school hours.
Learn more about restrictions on food and beverages for your school in this Spirit Box article.
Read the Current Vendor Contract
If your school utilizes the services of another vendor for vending machines throughout the school, it will be important to review the latest contract. Vending contracts either last one or two years, and often include restrictions on products and suppliers.
Make sure your team has a chance to review the latest contract so you can create goals and strategies that fit within those limits. You will want to be thorough in reading the contract to save you time and headache later.
Read more about how to effectively navigate the vendor contract in this article.
Your team can also consider a Vending Takeover, where your Spirit Box team competes to become the school’s exclusive vendor. Read more about how to implement a Vending Takeover in this article.
Create a SWOT Analysis
Once you have an idea of the limits your team will be working with throughout the year, you can work on creating a SWOT Analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Depending on the details of the food restrictions and vending contract, some of these details may come into play for the SWOT analysis.
Strengths: What are some internal team factors that could help your team succeed this year?
Weaknesses: What are internal team factors that could prevent your team from reaching your goals?
Opportunities: What are factors outside of your team that could help your Spirit Box business?
Threats: What are some factors outside of your team that could prevent your Spirit Box business from succeeding?
Conducting a SWOT analysis is a simple way to help clarify your limits and goals for the year. You can read more about how to conduct a SWOT analysis in this article.
Make a Plan for Recruiting and Training the New Spirit Box Team
You may or may not have many experienced Spirit Box team members returning for the new school year. Some team members may have graduated or moved during the summer. If you are one of the returning members of the Spirit Box team, it is partially your responsibility to train the newcomers so they feel confident and equipped in their roles on the team.
Hopefully, the team put in some thought for how to train new members before summer break, but if they did not, the start of the year is the best time! Better late than never. Thinking through the different roles that need to be filled and how your team will recruit and train the individuals who fill them will help your team keep the momentum going.
Not sure where to start? Read more about how to train a new Spirit Box team in this article.
Getting Started
Every new school year brings new opportunities for growth, ideas and new business success. Implementing these four tips can help you and your team start off the year on sure footing for Spirit Box success.
Need additional help? Facing new challenges? Contact us! We’ve worked with a lot of schools and would love to help.