Our visit to Cadbury World

On Friday 20^th April 2012, a group of year 9 and 10 students embarked on a 3 hour coach journey to Cadbury World in Bourneville, Birmingham.

Once we had arrived and checked in we got stuck into all that Cadbury World had to offer. We found at the door you got free chocolate and we went through a jungle where we learnt about the origin of the cocoa bean. As we enjoyed our free chocolate we found ourselves in a Victorian high-street, called Bull Street, where the first Cadbury’s tea shop was started in 1824.

We were then taken into a theatre where they showed us a film about how John Cadbury set up the company and then merged with his brother, and how the company expanded from there. After that we were taken into another theatre about how chocolate is made and processed; they also shook our seats to make it a lot more interesting and exciting!

Soon afterwards, we made our way into the Factory where we could see the chocolate being processed, from liquid chocolate into finished packaging. A worker showed us how the chocolate is moulded and we even got a little shot of liquid chocolate.

After this we had great fun going around a little track on these electric cars, which went through the stages of Cadburys. It was quite fun, but it was so slow…and embarrassing, Mr Leet’s photo wasn’t the best!

As we walked around the factory we saw different advertisements for Cadbury, including the robotic gorilla playing the drums, and were given more free chocolate bars.

After that we were allowed to enter the mother of all chocolate shops where you could buy a 1kg bar for just £4.99.

After lunch we went to the Essence exhibition where we learnt about how John Cadbury and his brother discovered the glass and a half of milk, we then entered a chocolate bar, which was amazing, we got to make our own chocolate concoction and eat it, it was delicious!

After the fun of making our own chocolate concoction we had a seminar where we learnt about the takeover of Cadbury by Kraft and the affects this had on the business.  We also learnt about reasons for John Cadbury choosing Bourneville for his factory and who the stakeholders of Cadbury are.

Overall we had a fantastic day at Cadbury World, we learnt about how the business was run and how Kraft took it over, we also learnt about the history of Cadbury and how it has changed ownership over the years. It was very worthwhile going to Cadbury and I enjoyed the day out.

By Rachael Holland, Adam Shalders, Ryan Dunkley and Reece Benson

Building a Business on a Budget!

Year 9 Business Studies students took up the challenge of making as large a profit as they could from a £10 loan. Their task is running until Christmas with awards for ‘Most profit’ and ‘Biggest social impact’ being made in the Awards Assemblies at the end of the Autumn term.

So far, some of the ideas that have been flying around have been very creative. They range from selling seasonal products, such as selling stocking fillers and printed t-shirts to selling raffle tickets with the proceeds going to charities. At the end of the competition students will be expected to pay back their £10 loan but they will be able to keep any profit they make or to donate some of the proceeds to a charity of their choice; the decision will be theirs.

By taking part in the £10 Business Challenge, students are going to be developing their team working skills, gaining an understanding of financial management and also learning how to develop and run a successful business.

The award winners will be printed in the next edition of The Learner and published on the NAC Enterprise Blog. Good luck Year 9 entrepreneurs!

Mission Statements

Years 9 &10: You should now have a good idea of what a mission statement is. It's intended to summarise an organisation's goals and philosophy. Click on the video link to see some mission statements for organisations which you might recognise. Why not have a go at trying to write a mission statement for yourself? Think about your own personal goals and try and summarise what YOU are all about in simple statement ...

Franchises

(OCR Business - Unit 1)
As a follow up to the work we have been doing on Franchises, here are the Cafe2U videos showing how the business operates and an interview with UK Managing Director Tom Acland: