TV host makes sweet deal for teens
Gourmet retailer sells Kidz Zone’s Black Bee Honey
Honey jarred and sold in Orlando’s Parramore neighborhood may soon be found in teacups and on biscuits across the nation.
That’s thanks to “Steve,” talkshow host Steve Harvey’s daily program. The mustachioed host interviewed two teens and their adult supervisor who help run Black Bee Honey, in the city’s Parramore Kidz Zone. The segment was taped a month ago in Los Angeles and aired Wednesday on ABC.
At the end of the interview, Harvey disclosed that he had worked out a deal with online specialty-food retailer igourmet.com to take the product national. The retailer also was to give Black Bee Honey 10 percent of all website orders that used the promotional code, “Beez,” on Wednesday, Harvey said.
“The whole audience was just electrified by it; the kids were all charged up,” said Parramore Kidz Zone youth employment director Reginald Burroughs, who joined two of the teens on a couch next to Harvey. “It’s a great opportunity to put some real dollars back into this community.”
Black Bee Honey jarred and
shipped 2,000 pounds of honey to igourmet to sell, and Burroughs hopes if it sells out quickly they will reorder and continue the relationship.
Also Wednesday, the teens announced they would venture into e-commerce and began selling their four flavors of honey on their website blackbeehoneyhq.com.
Burroughs was seated on a couch with rising seniors Kristian Burke of Jones High School and Christopher Thornton of Oak Ridge High School. Two more teens made the trip to Los Angeles, where they spent four days seeing the Santa Monica Pier, climbing to the Hollywood sign and experiencing the Pacific Coast.
“Being that we put so much hard work and time and effort in, it felt like all of that had paid off,” Burke said. “I hope everyone gets a chance to try our honey and also learn our story ... because this could help a lot of generations of children.”
The company began last year when Burroughs approached some of his teens at the Callahan Neighborhood Center downtown about finding after-school jobs. They told him they didn’t want to work for somebody else and wanted to own their own business.
With the Parramore Farmers Market scheduled to begin soon afterward, he began teaching the teens to brand, market and sell their own honey.
Parramore is Orlando’s highest-poverty neighborhood, and the teeenagers had seen firsthand the need for a healthy, natural replacement for sugars and artificial sweeteners in their neighborhood, which had been labeled a “food desert.”
They sell 1-pound jars of honey for $13, and in their first day at the farmers market sold out of $2,000 worth. In the months since, they have met with U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who tweeted his support, and have had their honey sold in Popcorn Junkie on Church Street and served in the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Orlando Downtown kitchen.
The Black Bee Honey teens gathered at the DoubleTree on Lake Ivanhoe with supporters and community leaders for a watch party for the show Wednesday and presented the company’s story to the audience.
Before unveiling his surprise, Harvey said he thought the teens were “laying the groundwork for something that’s going to be really tremendous.”
“Most kids in neighborhoods, if you show them how to dream and show them how the dream can actually come to fruition, they want to do that,” Harvey said on the show. “When you provide an opportunity like this, it does so much more, and then other kids notice and want to be a part of it.”
And that’s their plan.
As many as 25 teens, mostly from Jones High, help run the company throughout the year, and most are entering their pivotal senior year of high school, Burroughs said.
That means in a year, as his current staff goes off to college, he needs to start building a younger staff to take over soon.
With this opportunity, business is expected to kick up.
“We’re going to scale this thing up,” Burroughs said.
Christopher, said he envisions the company making another leap after its “Steve” appearance.
“This is the beginning,” he said. “Not the ending.”