Smoothie idea takes teen to entrepreneur finals

By By David Markiewicz

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Two more years of high school await Zicuria Ussery and, after that, college -- Georgia Tech, she hopes -- then maybe a career in industrial engineering.

In the meantime, the 16-year-old junior at Maynard Jackson High School in Atlanta has another matter to attend to: building her business.

Next spring, Ussery hopes to launch The Smoothie Shack, her idea for selling affordable healthy fruit drinks to fellow students after school and at extracurricular events.

She may be on to something. The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, an international non-profit organization, has picked Ussery as one of 27 national finalists, and the only Georgian, in the 2009 OppenheimerFunds/National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge.

She emerged from a group of about 1,000 students nationwide who participated in regional competitions. Now, she’s headed to New York in October where she’ll try to win the $10,000 first-place prize awarded to the idea judged best.

Ussery won school, local and regional competitions to earn her spot. She likes her chances to claim the top prize.

“I’m excited to go to New York,” said the straight-A student. “I have to believe (her student competitors) are just as good as me, but I’m just as good as them.”

At the national finals, an elimination competition, the students, ages 13 to 19, will present their business idea in detail to judges. Besides the strength of her business plan, Ussery may have an edge. The judges will get to sample her smoothies.

Judges in previous competitions have shown a passion for the mango-strawberry.

The entrepreneurship challenge is the culmination of the year-long NFTE program which schools around the country teach as part of the regular academic schedule. It typically can be taught as part of a math or civics class, or as an elective. Ussery took the course during her sophomore year.

“It’s sort of a mini-MBA,” says Suzanne Taylor, who runs the challenge. Students have to put together a business plan, addressing such issues as start-up investment, customer base, per-unit product costs and other expenses, selling price point, sales projections and income estimates.

The NFTE was founded in 1987 through the efforts of a New York school teacher Steve Mariotti who was trying to motivate his students. He determined that real-world education -- the kind gained in business -- was a way.

The organization says about 280,000 students have been taught the program which is offered at schools in 22 states and in 13 countries including India, China and Israel.

The program, funded in part by a variety of businesses and individual donors, focuses on students in schools in low-income communities, and it is offered in more than 600 schools in the U.S., including nine city of Atlanta public high schools. No other metro Atlanta schools participate in the program.

“It’s a phenomenal curriculum. It engages students,” says Shirlene Carter, principal at Maynard Jackson.

She’s not surprised Ussery made it to the finals.

“She’s very confident, very achieving and a risk-taker,” says Carter. “She knows what she wants, and if she says she’s going to do something, she’ll do it.”

Ussery says her idea came simply enough: she likes smoothies, and she’s worked at a smoothie shop. But she thinks prices at local stores is too high for most students. She also saw a need for a healthy beverage at school events.

In preparing her business plan, she surveyed about 200 students and found 75 percent would be interested in her service.

She plans to start by making and selling smoothies on her own at her school, and eventually expand to other schools and hire help.

Ussery says she hasn’t been entrepreneurial her whole life, but “as a child I always wanted to make my own money. And I was independent. (The NFTE program) really helped me develop my mind.”