The aroma of baked goods and the excitement of blind bags attracted crowds in the atrium on Friday, April 24, during the K-Pop Club Bake Sale. Hosted after school from Tuesday to Friday, the event featured a variety of desserts alongside creatively packaged K-pop-themed blind bags, offering students a fun mix of sweet treats and surprise collectibles.
The blind bags were filled with small items themed for the groups KATSEYE, Stray Kids, BTS, and ENHYPEN, elevating the traditional bake sale format by transforming each purchase into a more interactive experience.
“We have member cards, stickers, small photo cards, and little pieces of HI-CHEWs [in the blind bags],” Secretary Diane Kim ‘28 said. “We got inspiration from different boxes we saw online and thought it was a really cool idea for people to buy more and be more interactive with the club, especially those who like K-pop groups. We thought [blind boxes] would be really unique to our club.”
Behind the scenes, preparing the blind bags required significant planning and collaboration. Much of the preparation took place during Flex periods, where students came together to build the bags.
“At one of the general meetings, [K-Pop Club officers] told us about how they needed all hands on deck during Thursday and Friday Flex to assemble the blind boxes,” Vedanti Patil ‘27 said. “Over the course of two consecutive Flexes, I went with a few of my friends and we helped them put together these blind boxes.”
As part of the process, students focused on creating themed items, most notably handmade bracelets representing popular K-pop groups, that added a personal element to the fundraiser.
“We handmade and beaded a bunch of bracelets with letter beads that said things related to these groups,” Patil said. “Bracelets would say KATSEYE or ENHA — which is the name of ENHYPEN fans — so things like group names and fandom names.”
This step proved to be the most time-consuming part of the process and required members to work together efficiently. Despite the challenge, the collaborative effort helped speed up production and keep the process organized.
“[Adding the letters] was the most painstaking part of it because you’re manually stringing on every bead,” Patil said. “By the second Flex, we decided we should all do a machine line, and we assigned ourselves to a different part of the bead-making process. My part was sorting letters, and I put together the beads that would make full words and then gave them to the people who were stringing the beads on.”
The results of the hard work were clear during the bake sale itself. The stand drew steady crowds throughout the week, with the combination of food and interactive merchandise helping the club stand out by creating a lively and engaging atmosphere.
“A lot of clubs host bake sales, but selling something other than just desserts differentiated [K-Pop Club] from other groups,” Dalia Ahmed ‘28 said. “The blind bags made it more exciting, and it felt like there was something there for everyone.”
Beyond the immediate success of the event, the bake sale played a key role in endorsing the club’s future. Fundraisers like this allow the club to grow its events and support members and future performances.
“[The bake sale] is important to us because we really do need funding to support our showcases and events that we do throughout the year, and it would be really helpful to have [funding] for all the things we can get,” Kim said. “We’re looking forward to buying accessories for all our performing members, planning more events, holding more fundraisers, and [getting] costumes or decorations for any school-related activities.”
