When Jeffrey Good, owner of Cosmic Smoke-N-BBQ LLC, opened a family-owned catering business in 2014, he was following his passion for outdoor cooking, serving his community and really good smoked meat. What he wasn’t particularly proficient in was the marketing side of things, instead relying largely on word-of-mouth to promote his Bridgewater, Va., business.
“When I went fulltime in 2021, I still didn’t have a business plan; I just jumped in,” Good said. “I’m a barbecue guy. I concentrated my efforts on preparing food and neglected the social media marketing aspect.”
But Good realized that he could use some help in that arena, so when he heard about the call for local businesses and nonprofit organizations to work with Bridgewater College students on marketing,he jumped at the chance. And a team of business administration majors from Dr. Maria Lugo’s entrepreneurship class spent the spring semester building the marketing tools Good’s businesses needed to run more efficiently and reach a broader market.
The BC students worked with Good to write a mission statement, build a website and reactivate Cosmic Smoke-N-BBQ’s social media presence. They also designed an assortment of social media templates and trained Good on how to easily update his website and send social media posts. They even helped him improve how he takes and responds to catering orders.
“He was doing all his business over his personal cell phone and Facebook messaging,” explained Eve Umberger ’25, one of the students who worked with Good. “We created a form on his website where people could place orders that would go to his email. It streamlined the whole process.”
Good said he was thrilled with the results of the students’ work and has already gotten several inquiries through the new system.
“This has been my dream for the past eleven years,” he told the students when they presented their final report to him at the end of the semester. “I really appreciate all your work.”
Cosmic Smoke-N-BBQ was not the only area business who benefitted from the skills of BC students this semester.
Another team worked with Sandi Cararo, owner of The Book Dragon Bookshop in Staunton, Va., to reorganize the layout of her store, design a new logo and develop a social media calendar to promote events and new books. The Staunton News Leader covered the students’ efforts in a story that ran in the newspaper in April.
Cararo said the biggest thing she learned from the students was how to better manage her social media.
“I used to get up in the morning and post on Instagram at 7 a.m.,” Cararo said. “But the students showed me how to read the analytics and see that no one was reading them then.”
She said she’s since adjusted the time of day and types of posts she sends out and has already seen more engagement on The Book Dragon’s social media.
Bridgewater students also worked with the City of Harrisonburg (Va.) Tourism Office Gift Shop, the Town of Bridgewater’s Sandy Bottom Mini Golf Course, and Sin Barreras, an immigrant support organization that runs a Latin American cultural festival in Charlottesville. Partners at all five of the organizations said they really appreciated the marketing expertise of the Bridgewater students, as well as their youthful perspectives.
“If business owners don’t listen to what young people have to say, then we’re never going to be able to reach them,” Cararo said.
The students said that the project gave them experience applying what they’ve learned in class to real businesses. Several said they planned to pursue careers in marketing or sales, fields where the work they did would be directly applicable to their future careers.
Students in Lugo’s capstone class have worked with more than 60 businesses and nonprofit organizations over the past 14 years, mostly developing marketing plans. Applications for the spring 2026 cohort of local partners will be available in December.
– Heather S. Cole
5/12/25
