24A – Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity:

·      The Idea

o   World Hunger is an issue that has tried to be solved by organizations such as The Hunger Project, Food Pantries, Children’s Hunger Alliance and many others, many of these organizations run off of donations solely from the public, but a lot of people don’t even know these organizations exist. One of the largest markets for food donations has not yet been tapped: restaurants. A service that picks up leftover food from restaurants helps restaurants and the community.

·      Who has the need

o   The need for this falls under two branches. First, the less fortunate who are not able to have consistent meals and rely on places like food pantries. Second, this idea gives restaurants a way to not waste their money by just throwing away food and instead do something good about it.

·      The nature of the need

o   The need is for people not to have to constantly worry about their next meal and to expand the donations to food banks.

·      Forces/Changes

o   This is created by two things. First, people falling into slumps, losing their job, getting a divorce, whatever it may be and not being able to recover and then not being able to provide food for themselves. Second, a lack of sufficient donations to causes trying to aid world hunger.

·      Market

o   Defined by anyone who falls under the category of not being able to provide food for themselves as well as any restaurants that have usable leftovers that could be donated.

·      Current Satisfaction

o   Most people rely on local food banks or homeless shelters to get meals, but this is not always reliable and does not always serve adequate meals. Separately, through all the research I have done I found that not many restaurants are satisfying the need of food waste and normally throw away leftovers instead of donating them.

·      Opportunity Size

o   World huger can always be helped and will likely continue to increase as wealth gaps increase in many countries, this means that it is constantly a growing opportunity. Furthermore, since many restaurants don’t donate their food, this is a huge untapped market with a lot of opportunity to grow as many companies would want to be a part of a good cause.

·      Length of opportunity

o   The window will exist as long as world hunger does, which is likely going to be for the rest of my existence, particularly with the wealth gap increasing. 

Innovation

·      What it is/what it does/how it works

o   My plan is to create a service that will stop by different restaurants to pick up their leftovers and deliver them to local food banks and/or homeless shelters. The service will be mostly done using vans that have pre-set location to go to a specific restaurant that will be that vans assigned restaurant. I want to create a data base that has all the restaurants willing to donate, vans numbers, and food bank locations. I would pair the restaurants with an assigned van and the closest food bank, this would create efficiency as well as save gas. In terms of getting a restaurant to allow me to get their leftovers, this would require some negotiating. However, many restaurants have to pay a fee to have some of their leftovers removed and my service would be cost free, which is my main selling point.

o   My service is more of a non-profit so I am not looking to be incredibly profitable in the beginning. My profit wouldn’t come until later on when my brand name can begin to be more well-known and I can specialize into other things that I can charge for. For example, the YMCA is a non-profit, but they have specialized to charge for their gym membership, summer camp, etc. I will run into initial costs of having to rent vans and employers, however businesses that register as non-profit with the government receive tax reductions and stipends that I would use to help pay for things.

Venture Concept

·      Competitors switching

o   I have very few competitors in this field because it is a largely untapped market, there are only one or two other food services that pick-up leftovers and donate them and they were all small scale. I don’t think competitors in non-profit are something to be incredibly worried about, especially in this field, because we all want to help the same cause. With this logic, if one were to be more successful than the other then they would want to help each other out. The competitors include Feeding Forward and Rescuing Leftover Cuisine.

·      Role

o   I don’t have a lot of packaging concerns, my main concerns are vans and vessels to deliver food in (i.e. disposable pans)

·      Making a business

o   My business would be organized around one central hub and I would hope to grow it out from there. I would need one employee per van and for now I would handle the business side of things myself. I currently have two restaurants wanting to participate and I would add new vans as more restaurants become a part of this.

Minor Elements

·      Secret sauce

o   I have contacts of restaurants wanting to support this idea, which is the main thing I need to get my start-up up and running, and reassures me that this will be successful and can only keep growing.

·      What’s next for venture

o   I would want to continue to expand, this would include going to and talking to more restaurants to try to gain their favor and allow me to use their leftovers. This would also include adding new vans to my service so more food banks have a constant inflow of food.

·      What’s next for you

o   My hope is to grow the service to a point where I can specialize. I particularly lve to cook so I would like to open my own bakery and begin to make a profit that way.