Meet the Mission Bars founder

Student takes business plan from concept to market

Sonja Larsen
Editorial assistant, Connections
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia

A Bachelor of Business student at Avondale College of Higher Education has taken a class project from concept to market in support of mission work.

Marketing major Kyle Morisson would probably describe his decision to enrol in the unit New Ventures and the Entrepreneur as a no-brainer. “I wanted to do it as soon as I heard about it,” he says. The unit requires students to submit a plan for a viable business. Kyle not only completed the assessment task, he also took it to market.

Mission Bars is now a home-based not-for-profit health food company that generates income to support mission work. “I wanted to create tasty and healthy products to replace chocolate fundraisers,” says Kyle. The products include dried fruit, honey, raw, roasted and salted nuts, nut bars, and seeds and grains. Cafe Rejuve, a project of Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church’s young adult ministry Regeneration, began stocking the products this past month.

“Kyle’s onto a good thing with Mission Bars,” says Bill Truscott, a lecturer in the Faculty of Business at Avondale. “The motivation to succeed based on helping other people has been a key driver to his success and achievement to date.”

Mission Bars is currently supporting the Memorial Creek mission team, which is working in and with a village in the highlands of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. The company also raised $100 for a mission trip to Zambia during an auction at Avondale Memorial Seventh-day Adventist Church on March 26.

“We’re doing what we can with the time we have,” says Kyle. “We want to provide an outlet for people to support something useful.”

Caption: Entrepreneur: Kyle Morisson’s home-based not-for-profit health food company generates income to support mission work. Josh Hamilton.

Credit: Josh Hamilton.