On a typical Thursday, staff at the Circle C Market check what's in stock and decide what to order.

"I'm looking to see what we have a lot of, what we don't have very much of," said produce coordinator Erin Cheney, while looking through a cooler of vegetables. "So I'm ordering more celery because we only have four packages."

In a cramped backroom office, Brittany Daugherty calls the grocery store's food supplier and asks about ordering family-size turkeys.

Nearby, Sydney Adamson works on a computer. "I'm entering all the daily work in QuickBooks," she explained.

The handful of Circle C staffers finish their hour of work, and go back to school. Yes, back to Cody-Kilgore School, a couple blocks away, where Adamson and the others are students.

"Student-run grocery store, I mean that's not very common," Adamson said, in a bit of an understatement. It's rare in fact, although nationally there are a couple other school-run, non-profit grocery stores like Circle C.

Not Your Typical High School Job

The village of Cody sits atop Cherry County in the Sandhills of Nebraska. Just 156 people call Cody home. It's not a prime location for any retail business to thrive and survive; Cody's previous grocery store closed more than a decade ago.

"It started through a brainstorming session actually here at the school long before I was here," said Todd Chessmore, who was attracted to the Cody-Kilgore Schools superintendent job because of the Circle C project. "A couple teachers said, you know kind of as a joke, ‘we need to have a grocery store.' As the discussion went on that joke turned into, ‘well let's see what we can do.'"

They turned a crazy idea into reality, involving students and community members from the beginning. The USDA and Sherwood Foundation were among groups that provided start-up funding; the Center for Rural Affairs helped with planning. After a few years of discussion, debate and some challenges, they were ready to break ground. Then it took a few months and lots of volunteers to construct the unique 3,500 square foot building, which has walls filled with straw for insulation. The Circle C finally opened for business about three years ago.

We really see kids start blossoming. We're giving them an opportunity to do real life experiences. They're learning customer service. They're learning that there's a lot to running a business.

"I've actually been involved since I was in third grade," said Cody-Kilgore sophomore Adamson. She started out going to planning meetings with her mom, a teacher and one of the earliest proponents of the store. Now she spends several hours a week there. "I've been here through the, when they thought it wasn't going to work and it wasn't possible. Just always kept going and found a way and now we have a store and it's kind of special."

Here's how it works. A board of community members oversees the non-profit operation. Chessmore is executive director. During the school day, students take on tasks at the store as part of different classes, with a paid adult employee and teachers on hand to help train and supervise. The rest of the time students are paid to work at Circle C.

"The store is truly run by students. I think that's probably the thing that (we) kinda battled for little bit," Chessmore emphasized. "We have adults that are involved but essentially we try and get the kids to do pretty much everything."

That is everything from elementary school students decorating grocery bags, to high schoolers deciding to stock a new cereal. On this day, a small group of students decided to replace a generic crisp rice cereal that "never sells" with a different option. In a larger backroom that doubles as a meeting room where classes often gather before starting work, Junior Augie Galloway researched different cereal options. "I'm gonna do a Peanut Butter Toast Crunch deal," he explained.

Adamson schedules workers, and has been known to cover an open shift at the last minute, something that's not easy when you live 45 miles from town.

"Most people wouldn't think it would work," she said. "I mean the students are doing most of the work. We have supervisors, but it's on us. Yeah, there's a lot of mistakes made, but everything is fixable and we're getting through it. It's growing and doing well."

The store does about $250,000 of business a year. They've worked to attract business by keeping prices competitive and stocking 1,500 items. After just a couple years, Chessmore said the operation is self-sustaining and in the black, but not by much, and primarily because of how it's run.

"Without the school being this is intimately involved, I don't think it could be done," Chessmore said. "I don't. It wouldn't, it cannot generate enough funds and still be competitive to stay open."

Business Training

What doesn't show up on the Circle C ledger is how the village and its people benefit from having a grocery store that's not an hour round-trip away. But also how students benefit from having a place to market products they've created, a place to earn a little money with a part-time job, and maybe most importantly, a place to gain real-world experience. If you're one of Cody-Kilgore's 165 students, you're likely to do something at the store during your K thru 12 years.

"We really see kids start blossoming. We're giving them an opportunity to do real life experiences," Chessmore said. "They're learning customer service. They're learning that there's a lot to running a business."

"One of my favorite classes," said eighth-grader Lizzy Hooper. "If I ever want to run a business, I know what to put on the shelves. How to put it on the shelves. How to finance. How to get grants, and marketing and advertising."

"I'll know how to work with people better," added Daugherty, a sophomore.

Adamson, who will manage the store this summer, said Circle C helps her prepare for a possible future in accounting. But she's learned more by being involved in the process from the start.

"The store really taught me to, I mean never take the first ‘no.' There's always a solution," she said. "And (if) people tell you ‘no,' you've got to keep working and don't give up."

An attitude reflected throughout the Circle C, and throughout a village that on an edge-of-town sign calls itself "too tough to die."

This story was produced by NET Nebraska.