Despite growing up in an impoverished neighborhood in Orlando, Florida, where high school drop-out rates, juvenile crime, and teen pregnancy are high, a small group of teenagers are running a successful business selling honey that earns them enough to give back to the community.

When the teens began putting jars of honey for sale outside a minor league soccer stadium, they were excited but expected modest returns at best.

“I didn’t think honey would sell,” Christopher Thornton, 17, told the Orlando Sentinel, which reported on the teenage group’s business in Orlando’s Parramore neighborhood. The locale is the Florida city’s poorest, with an unemployment rate of 24 percent and a median household income of just under $16,000.

Yet, on their first day, all of the teens’ products were sold out and they profited $2,000.

Explaining their success, Christopher remarked to the news publication that their business provided healthy, natural products in an area that has “no Publix, there’s no Wal-Mart, there’s no fresh food.” Most Parramore residents instead rely on foods that are cheaper but not as nutritious.

Their sales continued beyond the first day. “After their first windfall, the team of about 20 has averaged about 1,000 in sales each week and routinely sell out. The money is used to cover expenses, pay the teens minimum wage and support the Parramore Kidz Zone, a program run by the city to help youths in the low-income neighborhood,” the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Parramore Kidz Zone is a program that equips children and teenagers in Orlando’s “highest poverty neighborhood” with skills to become “successful, healthy, well-educated adults,” the city’s website states.

Christopher noted that his experience “is helping me build my business skills. Once I get better at it, I can start my own business…when I get older, I’ll actually know what I’m doing.”