Assignment 18A – Create a Customer Avatar

Assignment 18A – Create a Customer Avatar

My customer could be individuals or restaurants. For this assignment, I will focus on the type of restaurant for my typical customer.

The typical restaurant would be in a hip and growing area in a city like Wynwood in Miami. It would be in this area because more traditional one might reject the idea of giving their excess food to a company that will use it to give it to the needy. The restaurant would be into sustainability and sell an image of being organic and selling organic foods. They would want their customers to know that they are part of a program that donates their excess food. It would support their image as a sustainable and no-waste restaurant. The restaurant space would be hip and be an open space. The people working there would have a hipster vibe and be open to all. 

My customer and I have our want for sustainability in common. I want to support businesses that have positive impacts on society. 

Assignment 17A – Elevator Pitch #2

Assignment 17A – Elevator Pitch #2

Principles of Entrepreneurship  

Elevator Pitch 2

Company: Food Waste and You 

Today you will waste about one pound of food. In a week 7 pounds. A year 365 pounds. In a lifetime over 29 thousand pounds. With this amount of food wasted by every person in the United States, does it make you wonder why 40 million people struggle with hunger, including 12 million children every day here in the United States alone? What if we could reduce our waste by even a pound and give it to someone else that is hungry and that needs this food? That is what I intend to do with Food Waste and You.  

Food Waste and You is a non-profit organization that works directly with local restaurants to try and reduces the amount of food that is wasted every day in their kitchens. Food Waste and You will start in local restaurants with hopes of expanding to catering companies, hotels, and even vacation destinations that house families for weeks at a time. Our services would provide a volunteer to work directly with the restaurant and pick up leftovers from the day's work or food that is deemed unusable by the kitchen and then bring the food to a central location where the food will be given to people in the community that need a meal. Funding for Food Waste and You would come directly from donations. Next time you eat out at a restaurant consider giving you leftovers to someone you see on the street instead of letting the kitchen simply throw it away. Thank you.  

https://youtu.be/9iV-FyhAXZc

Reflection
My pitch is very similar to the one I made last time (if you did not notice). I think that Some things that I need to change to my elevator pitch is refine the market and try and not read it off of my computer. 

Assignment 16A –What’s Your Secret Sauce?

Assignment 16A –What’s Your Secret Sauce?

Five ways that make me unique:

1. Reading people and understanding human emotion - I think I am good at understanding people and where they are coming from when they express themselves. I am a very observant person and i can usually when someone is being hesitant, scared, nervous, mad, etc. 

2. Dedicated and hardworking when I am passionate about something - When I enjoy doing something, I love performing the task to the best of my ability and will do everything in my power to ensure that it gets done. 

3. Know how to solve problems - Engineering background - I am an engineering major so I learn in a lot of my classes how to solve problems I encounter. 

4. Quality of work - perform things to the best of my abilities - I tend not to do things halfway and I do everything to the best of my abilities. I am a perfectionist so nothing is really "good enough."

5. Understanding - Because I am able to understand human emotion, I am very understanding. 

Interview 1:
This interview is my dad. He says that I tend to excel at everything that I do. I have a strong intellect and commitment to causes that I am interested in and care about. He says that my personality will be very unique in my field as I am not interested in fitting in in any social norm. 

Link - https://youtu.be/jA6p-1-E90c

Interview 2:

This interview is my mom. She believes that my human capital comes from three areas: my commitment to excellence, my ability to assess situations and people calmly and with a critical eye, and in my intellectual capacity. She believes that I feel with great depth and that my EQ is calmed by my desire to remain calm in all situations. She also stated that I need to find a balance between IQ and EQ. 

Link - https://youtu.be/QRZ8H85eWEU

Interview 3:

This interview is of a friend. She states that I am a good and loyal friend who is very honest when I need to be. She said that I am very self-aware of my environment and other peoples feelings - very intuitive. For beings on smart on paper, she finds it interesting how I understand myself and how introspective I am. I am also able to understand situations as if I am the one going through the situation. She also says that I use my knowledge to empower other people and not to belittle them. She also said that I do not care about fitting in and chose to be a non conformist to the extent that i create my own environment. 

Link - https://youtu.be/8vqIhDfOJOM

Interview 4:

This interview is of a friend. I am one of the most emotionally intelligent people that he knows and someone with a high level of integrity. I am also a very humble individual. 

Link - https://youtu.be/LM-pvXYJ1L8

Interview 5:

This interview is of my sister who I live with. She says that I am a very organized and wholesome person who everyone can depend on. I am very organized and understanding. She says that sometimes I become so focused on one thing that it can cause me to do things that may not be the best for my own well being but because I want to help others and do everything. 
Link - For some reason the video was not able to upload onto Youtube. I have provided a summary of the interview. 

Reflection: 

I believe that how is see myself is very similar to how others see me. I think sometimes it is difficult to try and describe yourself and understand who you are because it can be very subjective. Asking other people to talk about you allows you to see how much they care about you and how much yo impact their lives. I never thought I affected anyone's lives, especially my friends lives in such a way that they would speak about me as they did. 

Assignment 15A - Figuring Out Buyer Behavior #2

Assignment 15A - Figuring Out Buyer Behavior #2

I decided to summarize the assignment because the interviews were all very similar and my conclusions for each were the same. I interviewed three local restaurants in Miami. They all made comments about how they try and reduce their waste as much as possible but it is difficult to predict how much business you will get in the food industry. One of the restaurants does, in fact, donate leftover food to a local homeless shelter downtown but it does not happen frequently because the employees want to go home after working and not drive downtown to transport the food. They said that a middleman would be convenient. They all said that an organization that promotes reduced food waste would be good for the community and reflect positively on the restaurant as participates in the organization. 

My customers would more likely "purchase" the service in person. My business would probably speak to the owners and see how much food they waste and the quality of the food that they throw away. I believe that the restaurants would not want to pay for a service like this because it is free to throw away food so paying for a service to not throw it away would be bad for making a profit. When it comes to restaurants and food waste, I don't think that it is something that first crosses their mind during a nights work so my service would need to be something that helps support the business and not affect it negatively. 

Assignment 13A - Reading Reflection #1

Assignment 13A - Reading Reflection #1

1) You read about an entrepreneur:

• What surprised you the most?
• That Elon Musk's annual salary from Tesla Motors is $1. Also that he attended graduate school at Standford University for 2 days before deciding to drop out to take advantage of the Internet boom going on at the time. 

• What about the entrepreneur did you most admire?
• That he is very self motivated and knows what he needs to do to be successful. He is also very smart and he taught himself how to program at ten years old. 

• What about the entrepreneur did you least admire?
• I least admire how he ends most of his strong relationships in his life and pushes people away either because he is working too much and does not have time or because he can be arrogant and self centered. 

• Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure? If so, what did they do about it?
• When Elon first started Space X he was struggling to find investors so he channeled his own money into the company to turn the business into a reality. 

2) What competencies did you notice that the entrepreneur exhibited? 

1. Elon Musk trusts his ideas. Even though no one was convinced that websites like Yelp would work, Musk and his brother still reached out to shopkeepers because they believed in their ideas that it would work
2. Elon was very aggressive early in his life. He started thinking about what he could do with the Internet very early in the Internet days. He joined groups of guys that knew what they were doing and learned as he went along on his journey. 
3. He always does his research and understands what he is doing fully. 
4. He trusts young people and fresh new talent. He was once in their positions so he knows that a good idea can come from someone with little experience but a lot of creativity and imagination. 
5. He wants to change conventional ways of thinking and working. 
6. He enjoys his successes and recognizes/rewards himself. When he first got his share from the sale of his first startup he immediately moved out of a shared apartment and bought an 1800 square foot condo and a million dollars McLaren. 

3) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.
There was nothing really in the book that I found difficult to understand. The only part that I found somewhat difficult to follow was the beginning in how the author initially got Elon to agree to contributing to the book. 

4) If you were able to ask two questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask? Why?

1. What do you do for fun? I would ask him this question because I believe that even as a very successful and hardworking person, it is important to balance and remain mentally stable and enjoy life. 
2. If you could go back and fix one choice or change one decision you have made in your life what would it be and why? I would ask him this because i would want o know if he regrets and decision he has made or wishes he said "yes" to something instead of "no". 

5) For fun: what do you think the entrepreneur's opinion was of hard work? Do you share that opinion?

I think that Elon values hard work very much, as do I. Hard work is something that being successful directly depends upon and its important to enjoy the fruits of your labor when all is said and done. Getting to see the successes of your hard work is the best feeling in the world. 

Assignment 14A - Halfway Reflection

Assignment 14A - Halfway Reflection 

1) Tenaciousness is a competency. 
During this course, I have become more efficient when getting work done. I have also started to do homework ahead of time compared to previously since we know the assignments weeks in advance. I have learned to apply myself to my work more since this class is not assessment based but self-motivated. I have also begun to use my free time more efficiently since this class is online. 

2) Tenaciousness is also about attitude. 
I have had moments where I have regretted taking the class. If I have had a busy week with chem and calc tests, homework and labs then I tend to be stuck on Friday nights working on ENT assignments and listening to lectures. In these moments I get anxious trying to finish on time while still submitting a good assignment. What motivates me to do a lot of the work now, and all the assignments, that if I do all of them now, at the end of the semester I can stop doing work for this class when I am getting ready for finals in my other classes. 

3) Three tips. 

1. Work ahead of time even if you don't want to because it is worth it. 
2. Listen to lectures while you may doing something (ie making dinner, folding laundry) so that you are being productive while actually listening to lectures instead of being too lazy to watch them.
3. Make sure you stay self-motivated.

Assignment 12A – Figuring Out Buyer Behavior #1

12A – Figuring Out Buyer Behavior #1

The Segment
My segment will be local restaurants in the Miami area. All three restaurants owners that I will interview only have one or two restaurants in the city compared to large chain restaurants. One restaurant is a "Mom and Pop" Italian restaurant that has been opened for 25 years. The second place is a Mexican Restaurant with Spanish fusion in the Wynwood district in Miami and has been opened for 5 years. The third is a modern American food restaurant in the Grove area that has been opened for 7 years. 


Interviews: Need Awareness and Information Search

Italian Restaurant

This restaurant has been in its area for a long time and locals in the area frequent it. Because it has been opened for so long, its owners have formed strong relationships with the people in the community. 

Need Awareness: 

After interviewing those who work at the restaurant and the owners, I discovered that a food waste service would be most useful on the weekends when they are the busiest. Because they have been opened for so long they understand the way the business does and how many people should or should not come into the restaurant on a given day. But even with this knowledge, they said that at the end of the nights they do end up with food left over in the kitchen that cannot be used the next day. Therefore, they end up throwing it away. They did mention that they try to take this food home with them to their families or eat it themselves, but they do not want to eat this every day nor do they ever eat all of it.

Information Search: 

They become aware of their need when they see the food that is wasted daily, especially on the weekends when they are very busy. They mentioned that they have not really looked into programs that could help reduce this waste because they did not know if such thing existed. That is why their only real solution to this is trying to predict the amount of business they will get and make sure they have enough for that many people and not a lot of excess. 


Mexican Fusion Restaurant 

This restaurant receives a lot of activity from tourists in the Wynwood area, but also on the weekends when younger generations go out to dinner. This restaurant serves a younger crowd. 

Need Awareness: 

As this is a more modern restaurant that caters to the younger crowd, they are busiest on the weekend or late nights on Tuesday and Thursdays. They find it difficult to predict how much business they will get because Miami is a place that tourists can visit year round so tourism in the area fluctuates. Additionally, it is difficult for them to predict whether or not they will get a lot of business one weekend over the other. They mentioned that they often ordered too much food for the week and when they do they have to throw it away. The owner mentioned that he would rather order too much food and have to throw it away than not have what a customer wants and have to turn them away and risk not having them come to the restaurant again. It was also mentioned that they do prepare a lot of their popular dishes in advance (regarding the rice, vegetable mixes, sauces, etc.) so that they have the dishes ready at faster rates and when they make too much of these things they do throw them away. 

Information Search: 

The owner mentioned that they do not do anything to reduce their amounts of waste but he would be open to the idea if a company came his way offering to help. The owner does feel bad about throwing away large quantities of food but it is a business and he does not want to lose customers. 


Modern American Restaurant

This restaurant is a local staple for those that live in the Grove area. I personally have been numerous times. They serve families, locals, and the younger crowd alike. They are generally very busy all the time. 

Need Awareness: 

Like both of the other restaurants, this restaurant is busiest on the weekend.  The owner tries not to waste food but because so many groups of people come into the restaurant it can be difficult to predict how many people will come in that week. It is usually very busy but when they do have days that few people come in, a lot of food is wasted. 

Information Search: 

This restaurant does not do much to reduce their waste but would be open to trying to fix this problem. 

Findings and Conclusion:

From the interviews I conducted and the previous assignment, I have concluded that my opportunity is not only there, but that it is most needed on the weekends. I knew that restaurants were busiest on the weekends but I did not realize how even for restaurants that have been in an area for some time, it can be difficult to predict how much business they will get. I believe that a service that reduces the amount of food waste in a community would work best at local restaurants compared to chain restaurants. Additionally, this service would be most effective on the weekends or weekdays that were particularly popular at certain restaurants (if the restaurant has a special one day they may get a lot of customers). Any service offered to restaurants would need to be convenient and efficient. 

Assignment 11A - Idea Napkin #1

Assignment 11A - Idea Napkin #1

1) You. 

My name is Catalina Morrison. I am a first-year Biomedical Engineering major who intends on minoring in entrepreneurship. I am also on a pre-med track. I am fluent in both English and Spanish. I am taking this class to give myself to the opportunity to understand how businesses work by pursuing what I love to do in medicine and science. If I were to open this business one day, I could see myself working on it after I working as an engineer or doctor for a good part of my life. This would be a way for me to continue giving back while not being controlled by the hospital or company I work for. In high school, i was able to experience different volunteering opportunities and I loved the work and how good it made me feel about how I spent my time. I also learned a lot from all the people I met on my journey and wish to continue this in my life. I enjoy learning from experiences and opportunities that come my way. I am also from a very diverse and multicultural city so this allows me to understand and relate to different perspectives. 

2) What are you offering to customers?

I am offering customers the opportunity to reduce the amount of food waste they produce. For restaurants, my service would allow their excess food to be used for good. The excess food made in the kitchen could be donated and food that is deemed unusable could also be donated. This service would allow this excess food that would be simply thrown away to be given to people that need the food that is to be thrown away. A volunteer or a staff that is trained in the kitchen could take the food that would be thrown away and take it to a central location to be given to others. To the restaurant or business, I would offer them the opportunity to give back to their community in a way that also helps reduce their waste. To those receiving the food, I would offer them the opportunity to receive a good meal without having to search in dumpsters that these same restaurants throw away their food. Instead, I would allow this food to go straight to those in need, instead of being dumped in the garbage after it is prepared.

3) Who are you offering it to? 

I would be offering it to local restaurants (at least in the beginnings of the company). The service offered at restaurants would include someone in the kitchen assisting with the preparation with meals and the food wasted in this process. The service would also be used when the restaurant closes and any food that would normally be thrown away as excess, to be given to the representative of the organization or someone appointed by the organization that works in the restaurant. In the restaurant, there would also be an option for the customers to donate any leftovers that they have of their meal to the organization if the food is still salvageable and not contaminated. These restaurants would be ones that produce a lot of waste or sufficient amounts of food waste that could be used for a meal for someone else. 

Eventually, the company would expand to hotels, catering companies, and vacation homes. 

4) Why do they care? 

I think that customers would be willing to participate in my service and work with us because it is easy to recognize that a lot of food is wasted every day by restaurants, hotels, etc, and that there is a food security problem throughout the United States. Additionally, restaurants want to stay "trending" and modern society is beginning to favor companies and services that overall benefit society and do not go against what people value. If a restaurant is able to promote the fact that they have very little waste and that they supply a certain amount of meals to the local community, people may be more likely to favor that restaurant over one that has a lot of food waste. 

5) What are your core competencies? What sets you apart from everyone else? Also: what do you have that nobody else has? 

I think that my perspective is different that most people taking this class. I am not a business major or anything of the sorts. I have found that there are a lot of connections between coming up with a business and solving a problem. I can use these skills in my business ventures in the future. 

Reflection:

While going over these elements of myself and the business, I believe that these elements do fit well together. Although my experience in business will be limited compared to others that might be majoring in business, my ability to solve complex problems with creative solutions could eventually surpass theirs. My experience as an engineering major will allow me to work hard toward my goals and gain support from those around me.