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High Five Snacks | New generation of snack vendors

How these young girls are learning important life skills
Posted at 8:29 AM, May 17, 2024

EAGLE, Idaho — Two Eagle teens own, manage, and run a food cart, selling snacks, ice cream, and soda.

  • The girls are 14 and 15 year old sisters.
  • The bike is typically found at events and markets.
  • The girls have been selling for 3 years.
  • For their website click here.
  • For their Facebook clickhere.
  • For their Instagram click here

(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)

Walking around downtown or at an event, it's pretty common to find a food vendor, but not common to find one that's run by a couple of teens. I'm your Eagle neighborhood reporter Alexander Huddleston and I met up with High Five Snacks for this week's Made in Idaho.

"If you even think about starting a business, and it's like well, just open the business. But really that's not how it is. you have to get licensed and fingerprinted and do taxes," said Sofia Beams.

Adulting at 14 and 15 years old. Sofia and Eva Beams together own, manage and run High Five Snacks, selling ice cream, soda and other sweet treats at local markets and events.

"We do some wholesaling with Gaston's. We are going to do some with The STIL and Acme Bakeshop," explained Sofia.

The sister duo was inspired by a video they watched in school about entrepreneurship. They pitched the idea of a food truck, but their parents had another idea.

"They got us the bike for Christmas, so the joke is we got a job for Christmas," said Sofia.

The girls ran with it.

Sofia continued, "I love coming out here working because I can just hang out with my sister, so it's been super fun to just do that."

Eva jumped in saying, "Yeah, we get to meet new people when we got to different events and I really like to talk and converse with our customers."

Conversing with customers is where Eva says she's grown the most.

"For me the communications, talking with the customers, learning how to write business emails, taking business calls: that was pretty hard for me because I didn’t really like to talk to people, but now I do," explained Eva.

Both girls say this business has helped them evolve as people, as business owners, and as siblings.

Eva said, "It's been a really fun learning experience together. Anytime we've maybe had the possibility of one of us working alone, neither of us really like that idea. We’ve learned a system. One of us is doing Square and one of us is grabbing the product. It's just really cohesive and works."

The Beams hope their story encourages young kids everywhere to get out there and start their own businesses as well.

"It really helps you prepare for the adult world, but at the same time still be a kid," said Eva.