One ICE Coffee Please!

One of the many things LAS embraces is creating connections with our wider community to better support our leaders of tomorrow. Leysin American School has collaborated in the past with local coffee roastery and mobile coffee shop, Horizonte Coffee, giving our students a better look at what it takes to be an entrepreneur!

Christoph Sauser, founder and entrepreneur of Horizonte Coffee, provided hands-on experience to complement the multiple business curriculums offered at LAS: IB Business Management, Entrepreneurship, Financial Markets, and Economics. These exciting new courses are a part of a greater effort to create a robust offering for our Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship (ICE) program.

Four students from IB Business Management took part in an exciting workshop to understand, in greater depth, the operations, marketing, and start-up process of a small business. Jack, Kirill, Madison, and Aiden were encouraged to make connections from their course theories and apply it to the current realities of business. They learned about the ethical sourcing of raw materials, the complexity of distribution channels, and the production process in which they roasted, tasted, and packaged the school’s next shipment of coffee. Our students seriously took on the role of total quality managers.

In the words of our students themselves: 

“It was a very interesting and enriching experience both in terms of learning how to run a small business and also in learning how difficult and complex it is to produce just a single cup of coffee.  I look forward to applying the lessons that I learned to my Business Management class in the future." - Jack

“This hands-on experience deepened my understanding of the functions of business and the hard work that goes into each and every cup of coffee. And honestly, who knew what twelve espresso shots could do to a person?  Well, I sure know now.” - Madison

“For someone that often chooses hot chocolate over coffee, I never truly understood how technical it was to make a single cup of coffee. I learned in greater depth what I have been learning in IB Business Management and will continue to apply what I have learned during this experience later on.” - Aiden