The Teenage Snack Economy, Reported by Three Student Papers

We packed the eldest's T-shirts for camp last summer thinking of them as clothes. I now understand they are currency.

At Chatham Hall, a girls' boarding school in Virginia, the student investment group, the $ Club, also known as the Money, Money, Money Club, launched Speedy Snacks in January 2022: two wheeled carts of international snacks for the dorms, backed by more than 30 student investors, with research, marketing and sales teams. The founding president explained the market. The bookstore closed at 5 p.m. Students wanted snacks after dinner and after study hall. "So really," she told the school, "what we were selling was 'late night' snacks." Best sellers: choco pies, Swiss rolls and small packs of Pocky.

Anyone who has met a teenager at 9 p.m. has done this market research for free.

Then there is Cambridge, Massachusetts. In November 2021, The Vanguard, the student paper at Buckingham Browne & Nichols, reported that a student had been running a snack business out of several lockers for two years, with a partner, a private Instagram page for orders and other students hired to sell. It started when she bought a bag of Airheads in bulk and classmates wanted single pieces. Profits since the start: a little under $1,000. "You could say it's an institution," she said.

In October the school shut it down. The dean of students, Rory Morton, told the paper the school is "not in the business" of allowing anyone to run a side business, and that profiting from selling candy is "not OK." The student started a petition, which collected more than 200 signatures, and offered to share profits with the administration.

Offering the regulator a cut is also an institution, though a much older one.

At our house, the youngest runs the snack economy. She knows where the good crackers are and trades access for screen time. The middle one pays. Last week I found her ledger, in crayon. I am in it. I owe her two crackers.