Northern Michigan’s Willy Wonka?

Bentley Biallas wants to be an engineer, but he’d sure have a bright future in sales.

The teenager, who started his freshman year of high school at Kalkaska Public Schools thisweek, is one of just four students in the country being highlighted as part of a new promotional campaign for World’s Finest Chocolate, alongside star college football players Harlem Berry and Leland Smith. Based in Chicago, World’s Finest Chocolate has been partnering on fundraising campaigns with schools and sports teams since the 1940s. Biallas caught the eye of executives there after racking up more than 300 sales in the last five years.

Biallas started selling chocolate bars in fourth grade to raise money for a class trip to the John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids. Subsequent school years saw similar fundraisers – once for an excursion to Mackinac Island and another for a trek to Washington, D.C. Biallas found he had a knack for selling chocolate, and also that he was able to sharpen his skills with each consecutive year. He’s been the top chocolate seller at Kalkaska Middle School for the past three years, moving 60 boxes of chocolate in sixth grade, 80 in seventh grade, and 101 in eighth grade.

“When I first started selling, I went from door to door, house to house,” Biallas says. “But as I went on, I started selling to businesses and restaurants, and they would buy more in bulk. And then, as I got to know [the business owners] better, I found I’d be able to sell to them even more.”

Biallas says he enjoyed the challenge of trying to top himself each year, as well as the communication and relationship-building skills he honed through the sales process. The school district’s prizes for top sellers – a cash prize here, a 55-inch 4K television there – didn’t hurt his motivation.

One perk Biallas didn’t see coming? Getting to meet a pair of star college football players.

This summer, World’s Finest Chocolate inked deals with Berry and Smith, marking the company’s first-ever Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) partnerships. Berry, who hails from New Orleans, was the top-rated running back recruit in the nation for the high school graduating class of 2025. He’s now heading into his sophomore year at Louisiana State University (LSU), where he “emerged as LSU’s most productive runner midway through his true freshman season in 2025,” according to the LSU football website. Smith transferred to UCLA earlier this year after making a name for himself as a wide receiver at San Jose State and Purdue.

Both were once where Biallas is now: Selling World’s Finest Chocolate as school fundraisers. Berry sold chocolate “to help fund his football journey” in middle school, according to a World’s Finest Chocolate press release, while Smith started in fourth grade “to support his honors choir program.”

As part of its NIL partnerships with the two players, World’s Finest Chocolate also launched the “Let Them Reign” campaign, described as “a rallying cry for the next generation of fundraisers that celebrates how selling chocolate can help build confidence, communication skills, resilience, and entrepreneurial thinking.” The company approached four top-selling students from around the country to be highlighted as “Reign Makers” alongside Berry and Smith.

Don Karsten, whose Grand Rapids-based company Fresh Coast Fundraising works closely with Michigan school districts to organize fundraisers with World’s Finest Chocolate, says Biallas was an obvious choice.

“What happened is the school administrative assistant [at Kalkaska Middle School] brought it to my attention that Bentley had been just crushing it with the sales,” Karsten says. “I relayed that information to corporate in Chicago, and they were thoroughly impressed. What they’re doing with this campaign is celebrating super successful kids who are selling a lot of chocolate but also learning these great skills in the process. Bentley was the model of that. He has the communication skills; he keeps a customer list; he sells to people face-to-face. He was a perfect fit.”

Biallas spent part of his summer in conversations and photo shoots with football players he’ll soon be seeing on TV every Saturday – a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“The athletes were super kind,” he tells The Ticker. “I got to hear about how they sold chocolate bars in the past, and I got to see similarities between how I did it and how they did it back in the past. I just thought it was so awesome, meeting those people.”

Photo: Bentley Biallas (far right) poses with LSU's Harlem Berry, fellow Reign Maker Noah, and UCLA's Leland Smith.