As the end of the day approaches, students are ready to go home, do homework, or get ready for practice. The window opens, and the smell of fresh hot cookies sends people scurrying towards the wonderful smell.
After 30 years, the Monarch Market is back in business, now with Otis Spunkmeyer cookies for sale along with Monarch merch! Many students are ecstatic knowing that they can now buy cookies after a long, hard day of school.
One of the workers of the reopening of the Monarch Market is senior Anezka Nemec. She is 18 years old and is taking all AP classes this year. She is involved with DECA and used to play softball.
Another one of the workers reopening of the Monarch Market is senior Mackenzie Frederick. She is involved in DECA, NHS, school scepter, and does Varsity Track and Field in the spring. She also creates video content for the athletic office.
DECA is one of the many clubs that Papillion La Vista High School has to offer. It involves many well-rounded business topics along with many competitions where students compete against other schools in their category.
“To me, DECA is a place where I can really enhance my leadership skills and talk to other people from our school in every grade,” Frederick said. “It is also a place where I can really work on my business skills and my future ahead of me.”
Students have many opportunities to discover what they want to do once they graduate. To graduate, you must have a certain amount of credits. As a senior, if you have enough credits, you can either have late start, early release, or double early release. Most seniors take early release or double early release. However, some students come back for practice or get some cookies.
“I’m selling cookies because, as an officer, I’m in charge of the bookstore along with Mackenzie and Aileen,” Nemec said. “It also helps me get volunteer hours and I love seeing everyone’s faces.”
It has only been two weeks since the reopening of the bookstore, and the business is skyrocketing in sales. The Monarch Market is going to help DECA fund their competitions and help make the costs cheaper for all attendees.
“We had an officer meeting and Mr. Brown and Ms. Stock were brainstorming names. Monarch Market is one of the ones they came up with,” Fredrick said. “We did look at some other names, but Monarch Market was the best one of all of them.”
Now that the Monarch Market is back, many students have been very excited. Though, many other clubs could have been involved with its reopening.
“Mr. Olson went to Mr. Brown and said that they had a plan to reopen the bookstore,” Frederick said. “He came up to me in the hallway one day and said we had full patrol of the bookstore and asked if I wanted to help run it and I said yes.”
Now that DECA has a lot of control of the Monarch Market, they needed to find out who to hire to help run the small business.
“I personally decided that I wanted to reopen the bookstore because I didn’t have much on my plate to start with,” Nemec said. “Mr. Brown thought that the bookstore would help me be more busy and have something to do.”
Though the Monarch Market is now a huge hit at PLHS, there are still so many accomplishments to look forward to.
“My goals are to come up with some promotions to get people in, get some new customers, and I also really want to get some new merch designed so we can have people design in our own chapter,” Frederick said.
The store may change significantly in a few years, but there is always room for improvement.
“I hope that the bookstore never closes again, so they don’t have to reopen it,” Nemec said. “I hope that years after us, they continue what we started.”
The Monarch Market is a huge part of these wonderful senior’s lives that we can forever cherish as they go to college next year. Though many students see the Monarch Market as a merch and cookie store, these seniors see something much more valuable. Come buy cookies and school merch from 2:30 until sold out every Tuesday and Thursday! There is always something new sparking the development of PLHS and it starts with you.
