Two entrepreneurial Year 7 students from Smith's Hill High School have been using their time away from the classroom to establish a sweet little business.
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Thirteen-year-old students Will Haynes and Sarah Tootell combined their love of pastries to launch a baking and delivery business called Matin, the French word for morning.
Will makes the cookies, cakes and tarts for local families and businesses, while Sarah takes care of the administration.
"One day we were both injured and couldn't play sport," Will said.
"We were in the school library talking about baking and thought it would be really cool to open a bakery together."
Will, whose long-term goal is to open his own restaurant, has taken over the family kitchen to bake the goods for the business.
Will and Sarah had both planned to trial food-tech at school this year but the COVID lockdown meant they would not get an opportunity to obtain practical experience.
"I'm definitely going to choose it as a subject next year," Will said.
"In the meantime we have set out to make lockdown a little bit sweeter.
"We are learning so much about customer service and business.
"We have been getting a lot of orders for our Brookies, which are small chocolate brownies slash cookies, our chocolate tarts and our signature Matan cake. People have been ordering that for birthdays."
Will and Sarah intend to keep the business going when they return to the classroom in Term 4.
"I'm prepared to get up early and stay up a bit later to get continue Matan. It's really important to me," Will said.
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Greg Ellis
Almost four decades in electronic, print and digital media. A writer, presenter, emcee, photographer and videographer with degrees in business management, marketing and human resources and tertiary qualifications in photography.
Almost four decades in electronic, print and digital media. A writer, presenter, emcee, photographer and videographer with degrees in business management, marketing and human resources and tertiary qualifications in photography.
