Westbrook , Minn. -- Sixteen year-old Tim Sell may be Minnesota's youngest CEO. As the head of a food company, he struggles with production snags, worries about sales strategy and fights for a niche in the economy's most competitive sector. Someday, he plans to go into business for real.

The junior at Westbrook-Walnut Grove High School in southwest Minnesota is part of an AURI-backed program that teaches ag entrepreneurship. Sell and his classmates are producing "Prairie Smoke" barbecue sauce. Their enterprise, BOLT (Business Opportunities through Learning and Technology), brings value-added agriculture directly into the classroom. Educators hope the program will become a model of hands-on ag education.

11,000 bottles of sauce
BOLT is the brainchild of Westbrook-Walnut Grove School board member Jim Schmidt. Two years ago, Schmidt went camping in Colorado. He came back with a secret recipe for barbecue sauce and a business proposition.

"He visited my class and told us about it," says Lynn Arndt, a business teacher at Westbrook-Walnut Grove since 1981. "A lot of schools have entrepreneur projects -- my business applications class used to sell T-shirts. But it's rare for a school to produce a food product."

Arndt's applied business class of seven seniors agreed to try: "We put away the textbooks and we haven't used them since." That was in February, 1996. Since then, "it's been all hands-on learning."

Now, about 15 of Arndt's students run the company. The first year, with support from AURI, they manufactured 5,000 jars of Prairie Smoke barbecue sauce in the school kitchen. Last year, it was 6,000 jars. Students spend each June and July bottling, labeling, and packing the sauce. Last summer, BOLT provided part-time, minimum-wage jobs for a dozen youth -- doubling the summer job-offerings in Westbrook, population 850.

During the school year, students work on sales and promotion. The local Maynards grocery store and stores in nearby Windom and Worthington have been good customers, says Sell, who has worked on the project since he was a sophomore. Sales last year were about $20,000. The company is not yet in the black, he says. "But we expect to make a profit this year."

Learning life's lessons
In January, Sell and his classmates pitched Prairie Smoke to Twin Cities-based Byerly's. That was an eye-opener, he admits. "We were surprised at how many steps you have to go through. Around here, we just call up the store and bring the sauce over."

To get their sauce on the shelf at Byerly's, students learned they would need a food broker -- who would take a commission -- and a distributor, who would require a minimum sales volume.

"We'd never even heard of a broker," Sell says. The students were also shocked at the steep price discount they would have to take. "The kids were disappointed that it doesn't work like at home," their teacher says. "But I told them, 'Stop and think how much you've learned.'" Sell agrees, "We learn so much more by going outside school and talking to people."

He has spoken to some pretty high-powered groups, including the Minnesota Legislature, Minnesota School Board Association, Minnesota Education Association, and at the Minnesota Corporate Gift Show. "Going to the Legislature was nerve-wracking," says Sell, who has testified at the Capitol four times. The first time, "I really got the jitters."

Ag in the city
Despite the jitters, Sell and his classmates made a good impression on St. Paul Representative Steve Trimble, a member of the House agriculture committee. Trimble listened to their presentation and wondered if a similar project could work in a city school. He'd heard about kids in Los Angeles who were making their own brand of salad dressing, Food from the 'Hood. "I got to thinking, if kids could do that in L.A. and Walnut Grove, maybe they could do it in St. Paul, too."

This winter, AURI began working with educators at St. Paul's Humboldt High School to develop an ag entrepreneur project modeled on the Westbrook-Walnut Grove program.

Humboldt High is a natural choice for this project, says Kai Bjerkness, AURI development specialist. An ethnically diverse high school of 900, Humboldt is a leader in vocational training and offers a culinary arts program for students interested in food industry careers.