29A - Venture Concept No. 2
1) Venture Conecpt:
I noticed an opportunity to improve the wait times at food establishments everywhere and to save time in the everyday live's of people who frequent these establishments. The combination of the need for more time in the day and a need for fast, convenient food options led me to believe that this opportunity existed. I believe that busy college students, families and the typical workaholic are all great examples of people who possess this need more than others. This opportunity stretches globally and, but is restricted to those who are looking for a way to save time and that eat out. The long wait times in drive-thrus and restaurant waiting areas are made longer by the fact that people are constantly looking for convenience and are mostly on the same schedule when it comes to meal time. This makes the wait time issue even more relevant and it will only become a more widespread issue as populations grow.
The innovation I came up with to satisfy this unmet need is an app which offers real-time updates of different wait times in the drive-thru lines and at restaurants near it's users. The user will simply log in to the app "Drive Thru Buddy" and a list of local restaurants and fast food chains will pop up with their wait times. The user will be able to filter through options by selecting which type of food they are interested in, what type of setting, how much money they want to spend, etc. Another feature of the app is that it will let its users know what times of the day it is best to go to any one of the restaurants. The app will be free to download, but offer a paid version that will allow users to unlock promo codes and not have to deal with ads which will be featured on our free version of the app. The paid version of the app will cost $4.99 a month.
This innovation will address the opportunity that I described by allowing people to choose faster options for food and not have to worry about driving all the way out to a specific location just to be met by an extremely long line. People will be able to gauge if they have time to wait at a restaurant/drive thru when they are in a rush and not have to risk being late for an important meeting, test or job. This app essentially offers people peace of mind and an option to save time when choosing between restaurants. To my knowledge there is no other app that functions exactly the same way that The Drive Thru buddy would so we do not have to worry so much about get customers to switch over, but get them to realize that they need the app. A possible competitor could be apps like Uber Eats and Postmates, however they do not solve the issue for people who are choosing to leave their house for food or grabbing food on the way somewhere. This business would probably start out with about 10 employees, mostly tech experts to help set up the app and work out the kinks. We would also have people working customer service and marketing.
Our most important resource will be our attention to our customer's needs and requests. Since they are the ones that will help us succeed as a company, it is important to listen to what they want from us.
The next step for The Drive Thru buddy would be to add additional services like food delivery and other time-saving services for it's customers.
As for myself, if the app were to succeed I would eventually pass it off to someone else to run and and I would move on to coming up with another problem-solving innovation. 10 years from now I hope to be a part of or leading a company that is using their innovation to improve the quality of people's lives around the world and one that has a meaningful purpose!
The innovation I came up with to satisfy this unmet need is an app which offers real-time updates of different wait times in the drive-thru lines and at restaurants near it's users. The user will simply log in to the app "Drive Thru Buddy" and a list of local restaurants and fast food chains will pop up with their wait times. The user will be able to filter through options by selecting which type of food they are interested in, what type of setting, how much money they want to spend, etc. Another feature of the app is that it will let its users know what times of the day it is best to go to any one of the restaurants. The app will be free to download, but offer a paid version that will allow users to unlock promo codes and not have to deal with ads which will be featured on our free version of the app. The paid version of the app will cost $4.99 a month.
This innovation will address the opportunity that I described by allowing people to choose faster options for food and not have to worry about driving all the way out to a specific location just to be met by an extremely long line. People will be able to gauge if they have time to wait at a restaurant/drive thru when they are in a rush and not have to risk being late for an important meeting, test or job. This app essentially offers people peace of mind and an option to save time when choosing between restaurants. To my knowledge there is no other app that functions exactly the same way that The Drive Thru buddy would so we do not have to worry so much about get customers to switch over, but get them to realize that they need the app. A possible competitor could be apps like Uber Eats and Postmates, however they do not solve the issue for people who are choosing to leave their house for food or grabbing food on the way somewhere. This business would probably start out with about 10 employees, mostly tech experts to help set up the app and work out the kinks. We would also have people working customer service and marketing.
Our most important resource will be our attention to our customer's needs and requests. Since they are the ones that will help us succeed as a company, it is important to listen to what they want from us.
The next step for The Drive Thru buddy would be to add additional services like food delivery and other time-saving services for it's customers.
As for myself, if the app were to succeed I would eventually pass it off to someone else to run and and I would move on to coming up with another problem-solving innovation. 10 years from now I hope to be a part of or leading a company that is using their innovation to improve the quality of people's lives around the world and one that has a meaningful purpose!
2 & 3) I received some positive feedback on my first venture concept with regards to the idea in general and the plan to create a free version of the app in order to draw consumers in and gain users at the beginning stages of the app. I also received some advice on how to make this a more successful launch. I was advised to hire someone in charge of collecting data for wait times in restaurants. This will certainly take some convincing and skill so I may seek to hire someone with good sales skills. I have decided to add this position into my business plan and make it a top priority since this is the information that will drive the app.
This is a great idea, however there are some things that are still a bit foggy to me. Is your service working with restaurants to obtain its wait-time information? If this is the case, then I don’t know how successful it may be. Restaurants compete within the same window of time, the “dinner rush,” and they rely on people making a firm decision to drive to their restaurant and wait, this temporarily locks in customers to a very likely sale. Instead, I think that an app service with the potential to build a community of user input would be the best way to obtain this type of information. An app that is similar, only for traffic, is Waze. I think that the type of information you need to make this service work is information that can be acquired from users who are already at restaurants that can update wait-times. Regardless, I really like this idea and hope you do something with it in the future.
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