25a- What's Next

What's Next?

Existing Market: UF students and Faculty

1)      What’s next?

If my venture has indeed been successful to start, I need to further understand whether my current menu items and restaurant culture are preparing me for future success. To find this out, I will be focusing my interview questions about options the interviewees find to be healthy, what they enjoy most in a healthy meal, in addition to the type of environment they enjoy in a restaurant and what kind of atmosphere I need to create for this market.

2)      Interviewees: John, Zac, Rachael

3)      Future Path

·       Interview 1: John’s interview was extremely interesting to me because he highlighted several aspects that I had honestly not thought about prior to the interview. He hit on several very interesting ideas. After talking about my own views on recycling and being a positive member of society in terms of helping the environment, John gave me several ideas in which I can focus my restaurant on helping the environment, and being able to benefit from positive word of mouth to do so. He mentioned how I should focus on completely using paper products, with no plastic straws or any non-biodegradable aspects of the business. I found this very interesting, and I feel like millennials and other members of the UF community would definitely appreciate a restaurant who actively tries to be a positive member of society.

·       Interview 2: Zac’s interview was extremely helpful in determining whether my menu choices were on track for this market, and Zac helped me narrow it down significantly. Instead of having set meal options that customers must choose from as an order, I will instead have several different healthy carbohydrate and salad bases, various healthy proteins, and countless vegetables and toppings that would allow customers to build their own ideal, healthy meal. I believe this would help my venture tremendously by adding to the experience of customer’s building their own meal, while still feeling confident that what they are eating is truly healthy.

·       Interview 3: Rachael’s interview was helpful in determining whether my idea regarding adding a healthy dessert menu and “snack” options would be helpful in this market, and I definitely feel it would. She mentioned how popular acai bowl places and other fruit cups and shake options such as Impulse Nutrition are huge hits with sorority girls, and simply by adding this option as a separate, mini section of the restaurant could add huge success to the venture.

New Market: Poorer Residents in Gainesville area

2) How can I create value in this market?

As I have mentioned in one of the earlier exercises in this class, in addition to opening a restaurant on campus, I would also provide tabling and information on UF campus to help educate UF students and faculty on the importance of health, and I would attempt to do the same with this new market. I definitely feel as if some of the poorer residents in Gainesville definitely don’t seem to be putting health as one of their primary concerns, and by targeting my restaurant centered around health to this market, there is possibility in which I can add new value to their lives.

3) Interviewees: James and Deshawn

4) Reflect:

·       Interview 1: James is a lower middle-class member of the Gainesville community. Although he does indeed value his health, he believes he is unable to afford a gym membership or be able to pay for healthier meal options and thus has to rely on store-bought ready to go meals. This was pretty interesting to me, and I definitely feel like there is opportunity for my restaurant in this market. By educating some of the members on the low prices of gym memberships for Novice lifters, as well as how to shop smart with health in mind, I believe I can target this lower middle class segment of Gainesville to eat at my restaurant by implementing life style changes.

·       Interview 2: After speaking to Deshawn, I wasn’t quite sure if there was good potential in this market after-all. He told me that he is so caught up in attempting to support his family and his job that he rarely has time to focus on himself or his health. I tried informing him on the positives of eating healthy, and also that if he were to try to incorporate my meals into his daily life style that it could end up providing him with more energy and better well-being while at work, but he then told me he’d probably just stick to McDonald’s because it is so cheap. I honestly wasn’t able to build any new venture ideas from this market, and consider it a complete bust. My targeted market will definitely remain to be UF students and staff who value health.