Venture Concept No. 2

First Venture Concept Revisited

Illuminate: Food Literacy

With regards to my opportunity, there are both a segment of people who have a need and a specific nature to that need. There is a need for teaching, or more so learning, food literacy. The segment of people who has this need is from the younger and middle generations who wish to improve their health. In other words, these people are young adults and middle-aged people who are seeking healthier eating. This ranges from college, or even high school, students to adults in their thirties and forties. The nature of this need is that the health of the U.S. population is looking worse and worse as the years go by. Obesity is incredibly high, at nearly forty percent among U.S. adults. People have become increasingly aware of the importance of their health, which includes healthy eating. In fact, proper eating is the central factor in play in the health of people, aside from exercising regularly. The cultural practices, here, in the United States have created an environment that allowed this opportunity to come about. As previously stated, the demographics of this market are generally in the U.S., but even more so geographically limited to the urban and sub-urban areas. Customers are currently trying to satisfy this need by trying different diets, jumping from one to the next, as they inevitably break their diets because diets are not a proper way to live. They may also try to satisfy this need for better health by utilizing mailed meal services, like Hello Fresh or Blue Apron; however, these alternatives can’t be effective in the long term, as they can be quite expensive once the initial deals run out. Due to these flaws in the alternatives, customers are not particularly loyal to whatever they may be using now. This opportunity is not huge, but it will remain for a decent amount of time, or at least until people find how to eat properly.

In terms of innovation, I have proposed a service as a means to be applied in the marketplace to address customer needs. This service is by no means radically innovative. If anything, it is incrementally innovative, or possibly barely innovative at all. My service essentially equates to lessons surrounding food literacy. This includes teaching what to eat, where and how to buy it, planning and prepping those meals, and cooking the meals themselves. These lessons would even include details such as how to store foods, like the fact that acidic foods that should only be stored in glass as opposed to plastic. I am selling food literacy lessons by the lesson. They would be limited to a couple hours, presumably, charging by the hour for a smaller beginner fee at about $25 an hour, and becoming increasingly pricier with the more advanced content of lessons. Possibly going up to $55 an hour. This would not include the price of the ingredients themselves. Price discrimination may also be instituted, as there is an understanding that college students, for example, have less disposable income than a well-settled adult.

Concerning my venture concept, my innovation (my service), will address the opportunity I identified. My service teaches food literacy, which is everything one needs to know about eating healthy and how to make those meals possible. This inevitably solves the problem addressed in my opportunity, which is a lack of food literacy across the U.S. population. People will want to buy my innovation, as I am offering a service that will leave them with knowledge that can last a lifetime, rather than a temporary fix to an on-going problem. Additionally, customers would like to switch to this new product, as it will teach them a skill that allows them to be independent of expensive and temporary solutions to health issues. It would not be particularly difficult to get them to switch, as some of them are currently not utilizing any alternatives to solve their problem and others are unhappy with their current alternatives. My competitors are health and fitness apps, food delivery services, and pre-packaged meals. Their possible weaknesses and vulnerabilities include their effectiveness, at least in the long run if not in the short-run, and their higher prices. While packaging does not play a major role in defining my business concept, my price points, customer support, and the customer experience overall do play a defining role in my business concept. I would organize my proposed business to support the ongoing production of my new service with a small number of employees at first, even beginning with only myself, until I am able grow said business and hire a few individuals to help me control the growth of the business. The available roles in the venture would include other teachers to help get the service to more people.

I think my most important resource is my prospective organizational culture. Having identified ten resources and conducted a VRIN analysis on each of them, the only resource that measured up to all four qualities was my prospective organizational culture. This relates directly to the goal of my proposed business, making its mission statement unique from competitors. As for what is next for my venture, I must start to test out my services. I must find some potential customers who are willing to, essentially, do a beta test of my services. Without properly testing this service in actuality, there is no further progress to be made, aside from greater talk. Finally, as for what is next for me, assuming I launched, I would have to put a significant amount of time into this venture. In five years, I would like the venture to have grown, possibly serving people within a couple larger cities. In a decade, I would like the venture to be available to serve more people, possibly anyone who would like to use the service across cities within a certain region, like the southeast. As an entrepreneur, I would like this first venture to add to my experiences and teach me the valuable lessons I need to form and bring to life different business ventures.

Summary of Feedback

Essentially, my peers like my business concept. They like the idea of promoting food literacy in achieving greater health for people. On the other hand, however, they also mentioned that plenty of people are not motivated to eat properly. People may not want my service, let alone pay for it. I was also told that marketing these food literacy lessons should include some mention of weight loss, as that usually gets people's attention. I think this is a valid point and I intend to include it as part of my marketing scheme. Making physical results apparent from the utilization of my services will also be implemented in gaining the most traction with this business concept.

Reflection on Venture Concept

Based on the feedback from my fellow students, I changed my marketing approach slightly. I initially was going to market through social media with the aims of spreading my message of greater health, but now I know to include details regarding weight loss, as those are the physical results that people can see. People like to see actual results for them to feel like they are achieving things, so, I must implement some way of photo evidence for physical changes to properly maintain customers.

Pictures!

Here are a couple of photos of meals that I have prepared in the past, which potential customers could easily make themselves if they learn all that I aim to teach.