The winners of Guernsey Grammar School Six Form’s annual enrichment project will be launching their winning flavour at the Seafront Eat Drink And Be Local event.
The project challenged students to develop a new ice cream, in association with Guernsey Dairy.
Year 12 students, Emily Griggs and Francois Le Poidevin competed with 60 other A Level business studies students and will be selling one of their winning flavour options to raise money for local charities Guernsey Mind and Morgan is Me.
On the judging panel was Sarah Macknight a Member of Guernsey Dairy Management Board and an experienced marketing consultant. “I was extremely impressed with the calibre and the standard of the presentations,” said Sarah. “To stand up and present to a panel of external judges and your peers is not easy. The presentations were very professional, delivered very well and it was obvious that considerable time, effort and thought had gone into them. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting all the students and their enthusiasm for the project was infectious.”
The panel found it extremely hard to decide who should be the ultimate winner but after much deliberation, the top spot went to Francois and Emily for their ‘Cobo Collection’ ice cream.
“Their presentation just had that little bit more creativity and finesse than others,” said Mrs Macknight.
Although all the flavours within the ‘Cobo Collection’ began with the Dairy’s vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice creams, each one had a locally produced ingredient added to it branded with a local theme. Their flavours included Chocolate Chunk, Le Valdies Vanilla Fudge, Sea Salted Caramel – Saints Bay Swirl, Fermain’s Fruity Fun and Cliff Walk Coffee and Nut.
This business challenge was part of the school’s annual Enrichment Project for its Year 12 A Level Business Studies and IB students who were each tasked to develop an exciting new ice cream flavour. The aim of the project was to not only help them apply knowledge to the real world but also to build experience of running team projects and of creating and managing a brief.
Head of the school’s Business Studies Department, Mr Erich Hauptfleisch said: “I had confidence our students would rise to the challenge. As a teacher I was nervous for them as the recent second lockdown had affected our momentum with this project. However, they all managed to come up with some solid data in their market research, had creative ice cream packaging ideas, a number of interesting flavours (my favourite ones were Torteval Millionaire Shortbread and Guernsey Banoffee) and promising promotional campaigns to launch a new premium ice cream.
“We would like to thank, Jon Taylor, senior manager at States of Guernsey Trading Group and the other panellists for sitting through 19 presentations and for their courage to taste all the ice cream samples. It would be great if the Guernsey Dairy could take some of our student’s ideas and launch a new flavour of premium ice cream that the Guernsey community could feel proud of and see as their first choice of premium ice cream.”
Also involved in this project was Nicola Errington, Business and IT teacher at the school who said that the project had been a huge learning opportunity for their Year 12 students. “They have applied their business knowledge to a real life situation and come up with some inventive flavours and promotional ideas. All students have very much stepped up to the challenge learning valuable skills along the way including selling their ideas to a panel of experts. We are looking forward to seeing and tasting Emily and Francois’s Cobo Collection at an event this summer,” she said.
Mr Taylor, was ‘blown away’ by the students’ ideas. “I hope they all found it a good exercise. After having done their research, all the groups identified children and young adults as the primary consumers of ice cream and therefore recognised that the end product needed to be fun, eye catching and very tasty. Many linked locally produced products as an important selling factor, together with the added importance of limited air miles and recyclable packaging to reduce its carbon footprint.”
As part of the initiative, the winning team are attending Guernsey Dairy and getting involved in the production side of things too. This will help the students to understand the importance of acknowledging the challenges of turning a creative concept into a saleable product and its route to market.
The winners are attending this Sunday’s Seafront event in town and with the help of local restaurant Balthazar and Guernsey Dairy will be selling the winning ice cream to raise money for Guernsey Mind and Morgan Is Me.
The main picture shows students from the Six Form Centre involved in the enrichment project helping to pack the winning ice cream in preparation for the Seafront Sunday event.
