Johnathan's Entrepreneurship Blog

Introduction: Finding a domain expert or general expert for my business idea proved challenging. As it turns out, there aren’t any other business who actually craft allergy menus for small restaurant businesses. My idea is relatively simple: no app coding, no production costs, no shipping logistics> I simply create the allergy menu in excel and send the PDF off to the company for a fee and they can place it on their website for customer viewing. Given this, it was difficult to think of a supplier as well. Domain Expert: Paul A. Paul is a former Portfolio Manager at Fidelity Investments, member of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, and is the founder of Allergy Eats, a nonprofit organization which writes blog posts about food allergy news as well as operates a website which provides already available allergen information to the appropriate consumers. I fund this person by searching the web for similar firms to my own and navigating to the “our team” section o...

New Napkin: I am a college student who has grown up with severe food allergies. I have traveled throughout the country and, while traveling, I have been exposed to countless restaurants and food types. Because I have been exposed to so many restaurants and because I have the perspective of an individual with food allergies, I am able to create a product which pleases the portion of a restaurant's customers that have food allergies. In addition, I am familiar with excel and I am well-versed in creating Powerpoints, so I am able to create clear, appealing allergy menus. If scaled right, I could provide services to restaurant businesses throughput central Florida. 2.  I will provide easy-to-use, customer-facing allergy menus for restaurant businesses who do not have a method to accommodate guests with food allergies. 3.  The things my customers have in common: ·          Restaurant business ·      ...

Ryan Matthews, Small Restaurant Owner, 2019 My customers can be of very diverse backgrounds, but I picture my stereotypical customer looking a lot like Ryan pictured above. I'll go into some more detail about Ryan below. Ryan is young, is interested in entrepreneurship himself, and is excited to get a restaurant business on it's feet. When Ryan is not working hard on their restaurant business trying to deliver customer value, he is either spending time his family, watching/playing sports, traveling, or visiting theme parks. In a nutshell, Ryan is open to new experiences, extroverted, and agreeable. Ryan loves the outdoors, so he drives an off-roading vehicle; I'm thinking something like a Jeep or an FJ Cruiser.  Ryan is young and does not yet have kids, but hopes that when the restaurant business has stable cash flows, he can settle down. His favorite TV show is Impractical Jokers because of its light-hearted nature and genuine humor. He str...

1.  https://youtu.be/8LCb6RXLzDM 2.  Last time, the most prominent feedback was that I did a great job describing the problem and emphasized valuable points, but that I should get to the solution quicker and spend more time explaining the solution. I was surprised to notice that Mr. Lahera noticed I was reading from a script! 3.  I attempted to explain the problem with the same points of emphasis but tried to run through those points rather quickly, highlight the importance of having an allergy menu, and then move on to explaining the solution in greater detail. While I relied somewhat a script for the first elevator pitch, I did not use a script for this second round.

My own view: I would say that I am: Intellectually curious: I am interested in philosophy, psychology, physics, and roller coasters Passionate: I am very vocal and dedicated to my hobbies and everything that I enjoy. Family/relationship oriented: I think the most important part of life is to develop meaningful relationships with a select group of people. I feel I have done that with my family and circle of best friends. My apologies if some of these videos sound choppy.... all but #5 were done over Facetime.... but, regardless, enjoy! 1. https://youtu.be/yrUtI9-e11w This first video is my mom speaking. She speaks the longest out of any of my interviewees and notes the most unique qualities. She highlights that I am empathetic, family-oriented, trustworthy, and intellectually curious. 2. https://youtu.be/wlZh7mMR450 This is my younger brother speaking and it cuts out at some points. In addition to gleefully mentioning our mutual passion for roller coasters, h...

Rather than focus on the franchise restaurants which have locations in Gainesville, I chose to interview managers/owners of restaurants which are either local to or were founded in Gainesville. 1. Relish Alternative evaluation:  According to the manager at Relish, the quality of an allergy menu would matter most. Since there aren't many firms which offer the service of crafting allergy menus, the alternative would be to create the allergy menu in house. How/where do they buy:  Relish is likely to make small purchases (like those being made to me if I were to craft an allergy menu for the restaurant) in cash. Post-purchase evaluation:  The ultimate measure of the quality of the product (especially in the case where an allergy menu is the product) would be Relish's customers' response. 2. Mojo Hogtown BBQ Alternative evaluation:  The same idea presented in the Relish example applies here. In the case of Mojo Hogtown, they have a fairly efficient system (whe...

1. In this course, I have further developed my tendency to work ahead. Keeping up with more difficult classes is much easier when courses like this (which have relatively easy assignments) are not stressing you out. I have also grown tremendously in terms of my time management skills. 2. Very early on in the semester, when attempting to develop my business idea where I create allergy menu’s for local businesses who do not have a method to accommodate customers with food allergies, I utilized the UF business library to contact all Gainesville restaurants with revenue below $250,000. I contacted over 20 restaurant owners/mangers through that database (in addition to Ronnie of Bleubird wings who spoke in class) and only received one response: an email back from the owner of the PDQ in Gainesville. Ultimately, the lack of response has forced me to consider changing my idea to perhaps a website where I compile allergen information for use by consumers with food allergies. This wou...

I read Grinding It Out by Ray Kroc. 1. What surprised me the most in this text was that McDonald’s was originally a business run by brothers specializing in fast-delivery and was then scaled by an outside entrepreneur. I admired Kroc’s titular skill: the ability to “grind it out.” I did not particularly like that Kroc merely scaled someone else’s business rather than built his own…. It was a smart decision of him and a respectable business move, but I would have admired an entirely self-made story more. When Kroc was forced to part with 60% of the profits from his deal with the Multimixer manufacturer, he struggled to make a living and “grinded it out” until the contact was up, at which point he went on the endeavor with the McDonald brothers. 2. Kroc is brilliant at recognizing opportunities. Not only did he identify a great product in the Multimixer and think that McDonald’s was a great investment, early on in his career, he even noted a trend towards disposable cups in th...

I decided to establish my market segment as the chain restaurants in Gainesville.' Here are my 3 interviews: Interview 1: Bento Manager In this interview I learned that: -Bento does not have an allergy menu -Bento does have a method to accommodate individuals with food allergies -To accommodate these guests, Bento mangers typically inform cooks of the allergy -Bento does experience some difficulty with guests with food allergies as mangers always inform guests that the restaurant cannot guarantee no cross-contamination -Bento likely would not outsource the creation of an allergy menu because they already have an established business Interview 2: Pita Pit Manager In this interview I learned that: -Pita Pit does not have an allergy menu -Pita Pit does have a method to accommodate individuals with food allergies -To accommodate these guests, Pita Pit cashiers inform the visible kitchen staff of the food allergy There is some difficulty acc...

1. I am a college student who has grown up with severe food allergies. I have traveled throughout the country and, while traveling, I have been exposed to countless restaurants and food types. Because I have been exposed to so many restaurants and because I have the perspective of an individual with food allergies, I am able to create a product which pleases the portion of a restaurants customers that have food allergies. In addition, I am familiar with excel and I am well-versed in creating Powerpoints, so I am able to create clear, appealing allergy menus. If scaled right, I could provide services to restaurant businesses throughput central Florida. 2. I will provide easy-t-use, customer allergy menus for restaurant businesses who do not have a method to accommodate guests with food allergies. 3. The things my customers have in common: ·         Restaurant business ·         Located in Gainesville ...