Entrepreneur Market brings real business experience to Riverview Middle School
Riverview Middle School in Devon hosted its long-running Grade 9 Entrepreneur Market, recently, an immersive three-day event where students transform classroom learning into working pop-up businesses. Now running for 22 years, the project brought together economic learning and community engagement for the lunchtime hour.
Social studies teacher Kevin Haugjord, who has led the initiative for years, described it as an opportunity for “authentic learning experiences.” Students were responsible for everything from business planning and budgeting to marketing and sales.
“They’re investing their own money. They’re keeping accurate accounting records. They are planning and implementing marketing strategies,” Haugjord says.
This year’s market featured 16 student businesses, most of them food-based to suit the school’s lunchtime audience. Students who ran one of the ice cream groups, operating under the name Dairy King, said the planning process took around two weeks and involved everything from cost analysis to product design.
“We kind of had to plan out what we wanted to do, where we wanted to get our stuff, how much it would cost,” says Jeremiah from the group. “We spent about two weeks on it and recorded everything.”
The group successfully offered ice cream floats and sundaes, and noted that execution was more challenging than planning. “Probably the actual part of serving people when there’s a lot of people that want to,” Bishop says when asked about the hardest part of the project.
Despite the pressure of the lunchtime rush, the group said the experience was positive overall. When asked what they would change for future participants, the answer came quickly. “Get advertisements up,” Jeremiah says. “We only had one poster.”
With proceeds typically going toward Grade 9 farewell activities or a chosen charity, the event blends entrepreneurship with community impact. “I'm gonna miss it,” says Haugjord, who is retiring at the end of this school year. “It's fun energy. I'm gonna miss this entire thing. It's a fantastic object lesson.”
Beyond the student experience, school leadership emphasized the broader purpose of the market: Connecting learning to real life. Principal Brian Pedersen calls it “a really great way to connect our students to understanding what the workforce could be like,” while also bringing the community into the school in a meaningful way.
This school has confirmed that this year’s net proceeds of $3,600 will be put toward the Grade 9 Farewell excursion which will include laser tag, lunch and an activities facility in Edmonton.