Indian Grounds opened in October of the 2017-18 school year, and opened for the second year during the last part of August in the 2018-19 school year.

This year, instructor Michelle Thacker believes the freshmen have had a positive impact on the profits for the coffee shop.

“It’s much busier this year than it was last year,” Thacker said. “I think the freshman have come in and utilized it, as new students more than we’ve seen, but that’s a good thing. That’s what we want. We want students to use this in the morning, so it’s been going really well.”

Indian Grounds is open on Maroon days from 7:15 a.m. to 7:50 a.m. serving coffee, a variety of teas and a smoothie.

“We don’t really make a profit for quite a while because we have so much invested in the supplies,” Thacker said. “But our average retail sales for the day, it’s about $50-60 on an average day. Last year I’d say it was much less than that. Sometimes we’d have $30 days.”

It is run by students enrolled in the Helping Hands course including seniors Tanner Haselhorst and Jazmin Juhan. This is now Haselhorst’s second year.

“They (the students) get soft skills such as communication and customer service, learning how to interact with people,” Thacker said. “Just learning how to be appropriate with people in a work place setting, things like that.”

Thacker plans to continue Indians Grounds next year.

“I hope that the business continues to grow and that we see new customers,” Thacker said. “I’d like for students who haven’t given the coffee shop a try to come in and try it.”

19ibraun@usd489.com