29A- Venture Concept No. 2

My business idea is to open a grocery store that gives away free groceries to every 1 in 100 customers that enter the store. The idea is that the increased number of customers that come into my store because of this deal will offset the cost of giving away free groceries. In addition, most grocery stores, even successful ones, have an incredible amount of waste product, therefore this deal will help eliminate spoiled food without having to increase costs too much. The name of this store is Shop Free, but that is subject to change if I think of something better.

In terms of opportunity, I believe everybody has the need for my product because everyone needs groceries. However, there are certain demographic groups that the store will be more popular for. I think the biggest opportunity is with young parents with multiple children. This group of people usually buys a lot of groceries to feed the whole family and at the same time they are looking for ways to save money as much as possible. If a young parent buys 200 dollars of groceries a week, they will probably want to shop at the store that gives them the chance of all this food for free. If they end up winning the deal, then they will enjoy their experience so much that they will hopefully become a life-long customer. People are always looking to gamble and win big. A large amount of people constantly buy scratch off lottery tickets daily even if there is a very small chance at winning anything. Shopping at my store can be seen as the same thing, however it does not cost extra money to shop here. 

Forces in the environment that can change the success of my business is the economy. The higher the economy, the higher the spending capability of customers. This would cause customers to splurge and buy the more expensive groceries and buy a great quantity. However, I think it may hurt business in the fact that people are not looking for deals as much, so they might rather stick to their already trusted grocery store that they are comfortable with. I believe customers do have a certain loyalty to the stores they shop at now. Especially Publix has a large following that are in love with shopping there. However, I think if a store opens up that has the same food quality and gives customers the chance to win free groceries, people would be willing to change stores. We want to have a similar culture to Publix where the customer service is extraordinary.

For innovation, I think this is a brand-new idea that will be popular. I also think that if it is successful, other stores will probably not copy the idea. This is because my store will only have a few locations at most. Large grocery chains won’t change their national policies just because of a few competitive stores. The way the system will work is a computer generator will track every 1 in 100 customers that checks out. This will be random and not in order, to ensure that people are not waiting at the checkout area counting to 100. In other words, the first and second customers of the day may win free groceries and then the next person who wins could be the 200^th customer. It is not an exact order, but the computer generator will ensure that 1 in 100 people at the end of the day have been given their order for free. Customers will find out that they won at the check out and when they are about to pay, “Free Groceries” will pop up on the screen and they will be given their order for free. There will be a rule in place that you are not allowed to return any items after you find out if you win or not. This way, people who do not win can’t return all their food.

Venture Concept: The innovation described above addresses the opportunity of giving people an exciting way to save money on groceries. It is a struggle for large families to be able to afford all the food they want to buy. This is why they will choose to shop at my store, if the food is of good quality. It may be difficult at first to get customers to switch from their normal grocery store. There needs to be a good marketing strategy in place to make sure people know that they can shop here and win free food. However, once people start trying my store, and winning free food, I believe it will be easy to make people switch from their previous grocery store of choice. The key is to have great food quality with competitive prices. If I can do that and market my competitive advantage well, there will be no reason for customers to shop anywhere else.

My main competitors are Publix, Walmart, Whole Foods, and Trader Joes. Each has their own weakness whether it be price, customer service, or food quality. I am sure my store will have its weakness too, however we may not find what it is until business has started. The customer experience is very important while defining my business concept. What makes my grocery store different than others is the experience customers have of shopping and the excitement of finding out if you win free groceries. Organization of employees will be very similar to other grocery stores. There is no need to change the typical model. I would like to add another unique part of my store. For example, Publix has Pub Subs that draw customers in. Maybe my grocery store will have a great hot bar for people to get meals or an impressive bakery. This can be discussed with my team when I hire some employees.

In five years with this venture I want to be ready to open up my first store. I will have to do additional market research and more interviews to see if this idea is worth pursuing. I have done a significant amount of that in this class, but I will have to do a lot more. I will then have to find funding through investors and loans. Then, I will have to find a perfect location with a lot of families nearby and not a lot of competition. Lastly, I will have to put a staff in place and talk with multiple food suppliers. If all this can be done in 5 years, I will be on track to making this idea become an actual business that provides an exciting way for people to grocery shop and save money.

2. The feedback I received on my first Venture Concept was actually all positive. There were no suggestions on how to change it, however I know that nothing can be a perfect product, so I looked through it again to see what changes I should make. Everyone who peer reviewed my paper said that I did a good job answering questions that most people would have. Throughout the semester some students were confused on the logistics of my business idea and they thought this paper did a great job at clearing up any ambiguity.

3. When I reread my venture concept I found some typos, grammar mistakes, and reworded some sentences to make it sound more clear. I also changed the name of my store, but I am not in love with it so I would be happy to hear if anyone has any good suggestions for the store name. Other than that there were no other changes made to the paper. If given more space, I would talk about the potential opportunity to market to senior citizens as well. It would be good to have this population shop in the middle of the day when everyone else is at work. This way it would be a more consistent flow of customers. More details about this were written in my "What's Next" post, however, I still think my primary target market should be families with young kids.

30A- Final Reflection

1. Looking back at my previous posts I see how much I have grown as an entrepreneur. There were a lot of high moments that I will talk about below. The moments I dreaded were taking the Cupcake quizzes. For the most part I did well and the lectures were very interesting to watch. But a few times I would get a .2 or .4 and it was not ideal. Overall, I am extremely glad I took this course and it allowed me to be creative and receive honest feedback, which is not the case for a lot of other classes.

2. The most formative experiences were the elevator pitches. I will remember these for a long time because it allowed me to improve my selling ability. The feedback from my peers were very helpful and honest. The best part was that we did the elevator pitch 3 times and each time I improved. In most school assignments, we do something, get a grade, and then move on. Here, we were able to take the time to really improve and receive feedback. The most joyous experience was creating my idea. I think my idea is very unique and would work. Unfortunately, it is more of a marketing strategy that a grocery store could use instead of its own business. I am most proud of completing mostly all of the assignments. When I first looked at the syllabus I saw 2-3 assignments a week and I was taking 20 credits, so I was worried that it was going to be hard to manage everything. I was able to complete the assignments pretty quickly because I enjoyed doing them and it allowed me to think creatively.

3. I have definitely moved closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset. You can see improvement throughout my posts and I have become more comfortable talking to strangers and sharing my ideas with them. Even though I will most likely not bring my idea to life, the communication and critical thinking skills that I have gained will be helpful in any business I wish to start.

4. I would recommend to future students to plan ahead in this course. You do not want to see Thursday night that you have to complete three interviews. I would also tell them to use this class to their advantage. If it is a week where you have 3 exams, then you can get away with doing the minimum requirements. However, if you have a lighter week, take the time to really put in 100% effort into the assignments and you will be surprised how much you grow as an entrepreneur. Also, do not be afraid to switch you business idea if you feel like it is not going anywhere.

27A- Reading Reflection No.3

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

The general theme of this book is that when you are starting a new company it is smarter to focus on a small niche with little competition and then as your company gets more successful you can start providing a wider selection of products or services. Too many times people try to provide too much when they first start out or focus on the most popular products and this causes new companies to lose money. Find your niche and become an expert on that, even if your customer base is not very large. 

This book connected a lot with this class because it talks about smart strategies for starting a new business and finding the right market to target. We took a lot of time learning about segments in this class and this book teaches you how to find the right segment.

If I were to design a class assignment based on this book I would ask the students to figure out what they are the best at. Something they are really good at that most others are not. Then I would tell them to think of a company idea that can exploit that unique talent or interest even if they initially do not think a lot of customers will be interested in this. It is better to be the best at something for a small market than similar to everyone else in a large market. 

My biggest 'aha' moment came when the author was describing how Netflix started out. This illustrated his idea very well, saying that Netflix took movies that did not do too well in the box office and offered them via DVD. There was demand for the high majority of his movies and Netflix became popular. There is a niche for each movie and just because it was not a big hit in theaters, does not mean there is not a market out there that will spend money on it. The big takeaway is that as your company grows, it might be a good idea to focus on less popular markets and be the only one selling than to sell popular items but have a lot of competition. 

28A- Your Exit Strategy

My exit strategy will be determined on how successful my grocery store is. If it is not going as well as planned, selling it after 5 years would be unrealistic. I plan on starting small with one store in the perfect location and growing from there. Hopefully I will love my job and want to remain owner and CEO until I retire. That would be the ideal plan. I think this long-term plan has altered my decisions because I am not trying to make all my money at once. I want to take the time, focus on one store, and learn from that experience so when I add other locations I can learn on how to improve. Ideally my store will one day be as popular as Publix or Trader Joe's but I know that it will take some time to get there, especially on the national level. After a year in business, I believe my long-term plan will be a lot clearer.

26A- Celebrating Failure

One time I failed this semester was when I performed poorly on an interview. I spent a lot of time on my application and it was out of state so I had to spend a lot of money on the flight and hotel. I did not answer the questions very well and I probably did not sound confident enough. It was disappointing to spend that much money and time and have an unsuccessful interview, but it was a great learning experience. I then interviewed at another place after thinking about how I can improve, and it went very well. This experience has taught me that sometimes you are just going to have bad days and you need to take the time to focus on how you can improve after a failure.

I like to think of failure as an opportunity to get better. There have been multiple classes at UF that I have done poorly on the first exam and I need to meet with the professor or other students to see how I can improve for the next exam. I think this class has helped me with failure because of all the interviews. A lot of time strangers do not want to talk and it makes you care less about what people think of you. I would say I am more likely to take risks after taking this class because I have heard so many success stories of people who have taken risks and succeeded.

25A- What's Next

To determine what's next for my company, I have to figure out how I am going to fund opening the grocery store. I am going to have to gain investors and take out loans. In order to convince people to invest, I need to keep perfecting my elevator pitch and listening to feedback on different ideas for my store. I think I have highlighted key differences from other grocery chains that can make my company successful right away.

Once I have enough funding, I need to get some employees that will help me with creating my store and managing the food supply. I have to promote the store well or else nobody will even know that they can win free groceries.

New Market

In previous assignments I have highlighted targeting college students and targeting young parents with families. College students was not a great market because they do not spend much money on large grocery runs. Young parents is the ideal market because they are looking to save as much money as possible and still have to make large grocery orders.

A new market that I can look into are retired senior citizens. They often grocery shop in the middle of the day so it would be great to have customers when stores would normally be slow. Senior citizens also are always looking to save as much money as possible because they do not have income coming in. I think senior citizens would be thrilled to have the chance to win free groceries and give them an exciting place to shop at. I was unable to go interview customers on this because of the coronavirus but I would be real interested in seeing if they like the idea and what suggestions they have.

24A- Venture Concept No. 1

My business idea is to open a grocery store that gives away free groceries to every 1 in 100 customers that enter the store. The idea is that the increased number of customers that come into my store because of this deal will offset the cost of giving away free groceries. In addition, most grocery stores, even successful ones, have an incredible amount of waste product, therefore this deal will help eliminate waste without having to increase costs too much. The name of this store is Win Big Grocery Store, but that is subject to change if I think of something better.

In terms of opportunity, I believe everybody has the need for my product because everyone needs groceries. However, there are certain demographic groups that the store will be more popular for. I think the biggest opportunity is with young parents with multiple children. This group of people usually buys a lot of groceries to feed the whole family and at the same time they are looking for ways to save money as much as possible. If a young parent buys 200 dollars of groceries a week, they will probably want to shop at the store that gives them the chance of all this food for free. If they end up winning the deal, then they will enjoy their experience so much that they will hopefully become a life-long customer. People are always looking to gamble and win big. A large amount of people constantly buy scratch off lottery tickets daily even if there is a very small chance at winning anything. Shopping at my store can be seen as the same thing, however it does not cost extra money to shop here.

Forces in the environment that can change the success of my business is the economy. The higher the economy, the higher the spending capability of customers. This would cause customers to splurge and buy the more expensive groceries and buy a great quantity. However, I think it may hurt business in the fact that people are not looking for deals as much, so they might rather stick to their already trusted grocery store that they are comfortable with, without putting in effort to find a new store that can possibly save them money. I believe customers do have a certain loyalty to the stores they shop at now. Especially Publix has a large following that are in love with shopping there. However, I think if a store opens up that has the same food quality and gives you the chance to win free groceries, people would be willing to change stores. We want to have a similar culture to Publix where the customer service is extraordinary.

For innovation, I think this is a brand-new idea that will be very popular. I also think that if it is successful, other stores will probably not copy the idea. This is because my store will only have a few locations at most. Large grocery chains won’t change their national policies just because of a few competitive stores. The way it would work is a computer generator will track every 1 in 100 customers that checks out. This will be random and not in order, to ensure that people are not waiting at the checkout area counting to 100. In other words, the first and second customers of the day may win free groceries and then the next person who wins could be the 200^th customer. It is not an exact order, but the computer generator will ensure that 1 in 100 people at the end of the day have been given their order for free. Customers will find out that they won at the check out and when they are about to pay, “Free Groceries” will pop up on the screen and they will be given their order for free. There will be a rule in place that you are not allowed to return any items after you find out if you win or not. This way, people who do not win can’t return all their food.

Venture Concept: The innovation described above addresses the opportunity of giving people an exciting way to save money on groceries. It is a struggle for large families to be able to afford all the food they want to buy. This is why they will choose to shop at my store, if the food is of good quality. It may be difficult at first to get customers to switch from their normal grocery store. There needs to be a good marketing strategy in place to make sure people know that they can shop here and win free food. However, once people start trying my store, and winning free food, I believe it will be easy to make people switch from their previous grocery store of choice. The key is to have great food quality with competitive prices. If I can do that, on top of market my competitive advantage well, there will be no reason for customers to shop anywhere else.

My main competitors are Publix, Walmart, Wholefoods, and Trader Joes. Each has their own weakness whether it be price, customer service, or food quality. I am sure my store will have its weakness too, however we may not find what it is until business has started. The customer experience is very important while defining my business concept. What makes my grocery store different than others is the experience customers have of shopping and the excitement of finding out if you win free groceries. Organization of employees will be very similar to other grocery stores. There is no need to change the typical model. I would like to add another unique part of my store. For example, Publix has Pub Subs that draw customers in. Maybe my grocery store will have a great hot bar for people to get meals. This can be discussed with my team when I hire some employees.

In five years with this venture I want to be ready to open up my first store. I will have to do additional market research and more interviews to see if this idea is worth pursuing. I have done a lot of that in this class, but I will probably have to do more. I will then have to find funding through investors and loans. Then, I will have to find a perfect location with a lot of families nearby and not a lot of competition. Lastly, I will have to put a staff in place and talk with multiple food suppliers. If all this can be done in 5 years, I will be on track to making this idea become an actual business that provides an exciting way for people to grocery shop and save money.