24A – Venture Concept No. 1

Joshua Philoctete

ENT3003

Venture Concept

Opportunity (The Who)

My target audience/customer demographic is the growing number of vegans that live in the US. We would be starting with a college town, like Gainesville, that has an increasing number of vegan students, among the also rising number of non-student vegans in the city. There are a few vegan restaurants and dessert places located in different spots around Gainesville, and some restaurants have, albeit usually extremely limited, vegan options. There are thousands upon thousands of people here on the run, looking for a good place to eat, and at least a marketable portion of these people are vegan.

There are no fast food spots where vegans can go and grab food. Being a vegan myself, I know what it’s like to be on-the-go, and not have time to prepare food, or simply feeling lazy and not wanting to make food for myself. I usually end up shelling out a lot of money on eating out, because there are very few vegan dishes that are cheap. Restaurants that have vegan options simply see them as a side venture, an oddity that they do not see a reason to put a lot into. A vegan cannot walk into a McDonalds and get a full meal off of the Dollar Menu. Our goal is to put that power back in the hands of our vegan customers.

This window of opportunity will stay available, and most likely grow a substantial amount as the years go on, and veganism moves away from being an obscure diet to being normalized within society.

Innovation

The product/service we are proposing is an affordable, plant-based, fast food restaurant. We would be offering a friendly menu; burgers, fries, hot dogs, rice and beans, different types of vegetables, and maybe even vegan cookies and brownies. It would be a friendly food haven (and hopefully heaven) for vegans, and it would look normal enough to be inviting to non-vegans who maybe want to give vegan food a try without having to look at a menu and not recognize any of the items on it except for rice and veggies. Simply put, we would make money by selling the food. TGI Friday’s buys Beyond Meat brand burgers for 3 dollars a burger and sells them back with fries for 15 dollars. We could do the same for $6-8, undercutting their prices, making food cheaper and easier, and providing a menu mainly made for vegan consumption in the process. Our menu would be filled with items like this.

We would also be open later than any place that serves vegan food, and would be able to add late partygoers to our customer demographic.

Venture Concept

For our targeted demographic, getting them to switch will not be something that we have to work. This is basically going to be giving a person who was trapped in the hot desert for days a drink of water. They will go to our product because there aren’t any like it that are readily available and easily accessible yet.

We do not have any competition, at least within this state, for a fully vegan fast food restaurant. That’s why this is going to work.

The packaging would be (hopefully compostable) to-go boxes, and paper wraps. The location would ideally be somewhere on West University Avenue, heading toward downtown, so that it is still near the college, but not inaccessible due to traffic. The starting employees would be me, my girlfriend Jennifer Gallot, and my close friend, Ethan Cathalina. As we gain business, we will expand and bring in more staff.

Three Minor Elements

Secret Sauce

We are a vegan fast food restaurant, competing in an almost uncontested market.

Looking Forward

We want to expand our menu, eventually adding a full list of items that would mirror those served at a McDonald’s or something like it, but for vegans. We would also like to normalize our recipes to where we could bring in staff and branch off to other locations without losing quality.

Next For Me

In 5 years, I want to have three of these restaurants. In ten, I want at least TEN of these restaurants open. This first venture is the gateway to a chain of vegan fast food restaurants, and to bringing vegan food off the alternative menu and into the spotlight.