A group of enterprising 10th graders sell homemade brownies at TCS. Their profits go towards funding their own trips and projects. They reached their goals last year, and don’t plan on stopping now.

The popular brownies are made by Maria Cuartas but sold around school by Sofia Hurtado, Sophia Upegui, Pedro Hurtado, Tomás Ortiz, and Juan Manuel Rodriguez. Their business has been booming since their sales began last year. Their original objective was to finance a trip to a concert.

“We started the business because I wanted to go to an Ed Sheeran concert with my friends. Mainly, we wanted to pay for as much as we could. As we started to sell the brownies, we saw that [lots] of people were buying them. After the concert we [kept] on selling them,” the head baker Cuartas said.

The steady profits have given the members of the brownie business a newfound economic independence from their parents. Which allows them to help with the expenses of extracurricular activities.

“We want to travel [on our own] and to help our parents.  Every year we have a GIN conference, or we want to go to Cartagena, or someplace close to Colombia. By selling, we want to help them [our parents].”

Rodriguez has refused to disclose how much money their business has made in the past year; however, their success is clear. The brownies each cost 2.000 pesos and are notably demanded by both students and faculty members.

“[Maria’s] brownies are amazing,” Rodriguez said. “Usually by window we only have one or two left.” Cuartas added, “I was surprised to see that a lot of people asked us to bring them back.”

Rodriguez and Cuartas reported that they took off the first quarter to focus on academic activities, but that they plan to return this semester with a new goal in mind.

“In the second quarter we want to start selling again, because we were thinking [of going] to the beach at the end of the year,” Rodriguez said.

If their promising partnership continues to flourish, there is no doubt that other student businesses will feel the impact of Cuartas’ brownies being back on the market.

“The business is really profitable,” Cuartas remarked. “I hope we can do another trip soon.”