Assignment 25A: What's Next?

              For this assignment, we are transitioning into yet another new topic, growth. With new topics, however, come familiar tasks. For this post, students will be doing (that’s right, you guessed it!) some potential customer interviews. I will be conducting five interviews total, three from my existing market and two from a completely new market. For simplicity, I will break the post into two sections, existing and new. Let’s get started!

Existing Market. 

              I would like to start by saying that I am so glad that I enrolled in this course during the spring semester where free-time is abundant, and I tend to travel home about twice as often as I do during the fall semester. Luckily, I was able to go home this past weekend. (Easter Sunday and my sister’s birthday dinner Saturday night) With everything going on, I somehow managed to squeeze in some solid interviews. For these three interviews, I really stepped outside of my comfort zone and interviewed actual random people who were staying at Laketown for the weekend. Even though Panama City Beach is usually a bit of a raucous crowd during this time of year, it was a bit more family oriented this weekend being that it was Easter weekend. I am glad to be at the point in the semester where everything really feels like it is coming together. I will summarize my interviews and takeaways below:

Interview #1: Pam: Pam is a mother of two from southern Georgia. She and her family decided to use their children’s Spring Break as the perfect excuse to come to the beach for the first time all year. After I explained my venture concept to her, (we even walked over to the potential space) she was extremely excited about the business outlook. She did explain to me that she does not consider herself to business savvy but said that she thought brand awareness could be an issue. With so much to do, and so little time, people on vacation must pick and choose their activities wisely. Her recommendation was to hit marketing hard and see what happens!

Interview #2: Henry: Henry is a semi-retired bus driver from Michigan who lives at Laketown full time when he is not on the road. I thought that he might be a resident, because we bumped into each other at the 10^th floor hot tub. (the one that most temporary guests don’t know about) When I pitched him my idea, he was gracious enough to pitch me three of his own ideas which I didn’t ask for, I’ll spare you the details. After I was finally able to get him on track, he said that he thought it could be a good idea, but I just couldn’t convince him that people would pay $3.50 for a cup of coffee. (Henry is a bit older) So he thought that I should lower my costs, which I agree with, but for different reasons.

Interview #3: Jessica: Jessica is a college student, but she came down for vacation with family. She is an everyday coffee drinker and told me it would have been nice to wake up and come down to the boardwalk for a cup. After hearing out my venture concept, and deciding that I wasn’t hitting on her, she was able to raise a good point. She said that for me to succeed in this environment, I will need to be very customer oriented. Since I don’t have the brand awareness of a big-box chain or the loyalty of a well-established local shop, Jessica thinks that I need to play up the angle of making every cup count.

Path for the Future: After taking these interviews and my work thus far into the semester into consideration, it has become apparent to me that if I want to do well, I will have to rely on marketing to get people in the door and a grassroots movement centered around quality to keep them coming back.

New Market.

Being in as many markets as possible will obviously help most businesses looking to increase their revenue. Since my business is so location specific, I was really having a tough time coming up with just how I’d get into another market. That’s when it dawned on me that B2B could be my answer. Almost all businesses have meetings on some level. It is no secret that a cup of coffee could be the difference between a head bobbing embarrassing dose off and nodding along with the key presentation that your supervisor is giving. Providing a catering service for corporate business settings could be a revenue driver for us, especially during the slower vacation months. I will summarize my interviews and takeaways below:

Interview #1: John: John is a mid-level manager for a graphics company in Orlando. Obviously, Orlando is a bit too far for our catering service currently but use your imagination a bit. When I pitched him my concept, he immediately went all tech on me. In his opinion, an app or a website could really be useful for a mid-size company.

Here is John’s ideal B2B scenario for my venture:

-mid-sized company, large enough to provide employees with coffee, but not large enough to be prepared for a 100+ person meeting with a large client

-From there, the mid-sized company can order one of several corporate catering packages or create their own

Interview #2: Matt: Matt is an entry-level analyst for a large bank. Again, Matt lives too far away for his firm to be a potential client, but I believe that there will be some reciprocity among businesses regardless of location. When I pitched my venture to Matt, I felt like he gave it an honest listen, but he did not show the same enthusiasm as John. He said that is was most certainly doable, but that I’d have to come up with a sure-fire method for differentiating myself from the hundreds of delivery services out there.

New Market Reflection:

              The most surprising thing to learn for me has been just how vast the B2B market is. In a way, I now feel that my original market is so small and limited, that the B2B should be my new focus. On the other hand, the B2B market has more obvious problems like competition and start up costs. As a whole, the B2B market is more attractive than my current one, but it would require completely different business plans and goals.