Venture Concept No. 2

My business involves providing better school lunch services to schools around the country. The people who have this need the most are elementary school students. A majority of kids rely on school lunch food for their meals. Teachers also have this need, as a good amount of them also rely on school lunch. They are all at school for a long period of time, and they are unable to go out and get outside food. There are no changes to the environment that are causing this need. It is a need that has always existed without a real solution existing. The geographic area I am covering will be to start in Florida and later expand to around the United States. Demographically, I am focusing on 4-10-year-old elementary school kids. Customers are currently satisfying this need through the basic food provided by their local school district. Most would be more than willing to switch over to my company given the opportunity. I think this is a huge opportunity since there is such a huge market and so few competitors. I think the window will be open for a long time, as there will always be kids who need to eat lunch at school.

My business will be a service that will provide school lunches to schools. We would begin primarily with private schoolsm then venture into the public school realm. We will do this by hiring professional chefs and sending them to the schools. The chefs will have free reign to choose which food they will serve that day based on the menu the schools pay for. We will provide the chefs with the ingredients they need. We will make money by selling different packages to the schools; they can choose between our basic, advanced, and premium packages. The better package they choose, the more it will cost, but it will provide more options. For example, the advanced package will include a salad and soup bar while the basic does not. We would need to make sure that there is enough variety to satisfy students from ages 4-10. They don't all eat the same foods, so we would need to make sure there is something for everyone. The contracts would last for two years each.

My innovation will solve the problem of school lunch food being low quality and unhealthy. By providing better quality, healthy food, we're making the kids happier and healthier as they can do better in school. We are also helping the teachers as they would also be eating this food. They can't leave campus, so they need to rely on that same school food. I think the students and teachers would easily switch over as they already don't like the food they are being served. There really aren't any competitors, since the school districts typically provide the food. The key aspect of this venture will be distributing. We need to find a cheap, efficient way to send out high quality chefs to as many schools as possible and give them access to high-quality ingredients. We would interview a lot of chefs from the start, but only hire them once we find a school for them to work at. They would get sent to the school and would be under contract for as long as the school is under contract with us.

I think the number one resource I have is Public Support. It is a near-universal opinion that school lunches need to be improved, so most people would approve of this business if I can do it successfully. After I tackle the elementary school market, I would move on to middle and high schools, and eventually colleges. I know there are already companies that provide similar services to colleges, so I would need to make sure my business is extremely successful in the K-12 sector before going after the college market. For me, I would want this to be successful to the point where I could sell the company to a different food service (like College Chefs), and I could move on to a new entrepreneurial adventure.

I did not receive a lot of feedback, but what I did receive was helpful. I received support for my current approach to target the elementary school market and conquer it; however, a helpful tip I received is to make sure that I have enough variety to satisfy the entire 4-10 age group, since their tastes may be more diverse then I'm expecting. Another piece of feedback I got was to focus on private schools first as there will be less red tape to cut and it will be easier to get my foot in the door. I learned that I need to be a little more specific in my approach, as it seems a lot of the feedback I received involved me refining my ideas to be less broad.