30A – Final Reflection

1- It is been a journey of the learning experience reading my blog made me realized that I overcome several challenges. I remember that I was totally uncomfortable doing certain assignments such as the ones that included interviews. I am a shy person and it is hard for me to speak with people that I don't know, but I am glad this assignment helped me to go out of my comfort zone. I feel more confident when it comes to talking to others which is really important in my future career since I will be communicating with patients and other professionals. Moreover, I did 3 elevator pitch which let me practice for future presentations. I had to practice a lot but at the end of the day it turned out good.

2- I think the most formative experience was the elevator pitch videos because is not something that we commonly do. I think this helps me to prepare for future presentations it helped to practice the speed of my voice, body language, and movement of the hand and to memorized scripts. I feel totally proud that I accomplish to record these videos and that I improved every time that I recorded them. In addition, I feel extremely proud that I got to develop a bussiness idea that I have been thinking to demonstrate my baking skills, and that it might be a bussiness that can help my family to get an extra income and to start a new life.

3- I think that I have developed an entrepreneurial mindset because lately, I see opportunities for the creation of a product or service because I see that people have a necessity of them. Before taking this class my mind did not work that way. Moreover, I think that my mind is more open and I am always asking for feedback because I want to hear different points of view. Even if people don't say anything at the moment I ask what they think. When I cook something I ask my parents and sisters to give me their opinion on flavor, presentation, texture to know what I can improve to make it better.

4- If I had the opportunity to advise future students I will tell them that to be successful in this class they need to develop organization and time management skills because there is a lot to do. I will tell them to have an open mind at the time receiving feedback and use them to improve and see things from a different perspective and provide constructive feedback to others because is a huge help to know if you are doing this right or what you need to improve. In addition, work on a bussiness idea that you feel passion for because it will make your journey easier since you will have to stick to this idea till the end of the semester. Moreover, video lecture are important I recommend watching them and taking notes because cupcake questions come directly from these lectures.

29A – Venture Concept No. 2

Opportunity

The opportunity that I have been trying to develop is to open an online bakery where I am going to sell good quality homemade baked goods products. The quality of my products will be extremely good since they won't be frozen or preserve products and the products will be similar to the ones we can find in a regular retail store. In addition, I will be offering delivery services when customers place their orders we will deliver their product to their location, so they won't have to go anywhere. My potential customers are the ones that enjoy homemade and fresh baked goods products, but they do not have the skills or time to bake them. In previous interviews, I have identified that my target audience is families with children around the age of 2-16 years old. However, this can be very variable because young couples or college students have shown interest in my products too.

The need for my products is to address the lack of good quality baked goods products. Usually, the products that people buy in common retail stores are frozen and preserved and they lack freshness and the flavor is not what people ate looking for.  My product will solve these needs because it will deliver the freshness and the homemade flavor that people are looking for. My products will be offered in Orlando, Fl area and they can be for people that enjoy eating sweet overs the weekend, snake or maybe for people that want to organize special events.

I have mentioned before that a lot of people I interviewed they are loyal to big bakeries and that is one of my weakness as a small business. However, the reality is that many of these retail bakeries that are recognized by a lot of people do not deliver that homemade flavor people are looking for. My products will be recognized by flavor and freshness and with the delivery service, it will be something that will be appealing to a lot of people. 

Innovation

Many people may think that my idea does not have any innovation, but the reality is that the innovation is in the recipes that I have been developing throughout the years and this is what makes my product different from others. This journey has not been easy because baking is a lot about try and failure and I have to say that I have a lot of failures developing my recipes, but I was able to successfully creating the recipes for different products such as brownies, cakes, cupcakes, cookies and different kind of bread.  

One of my favorite thing to bake are cookies I actually consider myself a cookies monster because cookies are the best dessert ever especially if they are homemade. I have to say that this is one of the recipes that was hard to create and modify. I bake different kinds of cookies such as birthday cake cookies, sprinkle cookies, cinnamon cookies, lemon cookies, salted caramel cookies, and my favorite want chocolate chips cookies. All these cookies are chewy in the inside and crunchy on the outside. Each cookies weight 120 g and they are going to sell 2.25$ each cookie or dozen cookies for 25$. My brownies are characterized to be extra fudge and top with homemade Nutella each brownie will cost 2 $. 

My cakes are characterized because the texture is fluffy and moist. Also, I offer a different kind of flavor and all cakes have a frosting. Customers can buy a slide of cake for 2.50$ or you can buy all cake the price will vary in how big the customer wants the cake. Cupcakes are also fluffy and moist with frosting on the top. The size of the cupcakes are regular and the prices of the cupcakes vary between 1.25-3 $ depending on the flavor and toppings of the cupcake. A dozen cupcakes can vary between 8-15$ depending on the flavor of the cupcakes. 

In addition, I am thinking of creating a loyalty reward program where people that buy my products will get reward points every time they buy one of my products. They can use this points to get futures discounts or gifts depending on the amount of point they have. This would help me to raise and build my community and it will help me to have loyal customers.

Venture Concept

The recipes that I created in the past will help me to bake good quality homemade products and this will be useful for people that are looking for fresh products with a good flavor. Moreover, the delivery service is something that is appealing to a lot of people since they do not have to go anywhere. The hard part to make customers switch will be the big competition that is in this field because sometimes people prefer to buy in some store that they already know even if the products are not what they want. After intervening a lot of people I realized that one of my biggest competition is Publix bakery because apparently is one of the best retail stores when it comes to baked products. However, these products are not as fresh or have the same flavor as homemade products. Moreover, the majority of these products are frozen and have a lot of additives to preserve the products. This gives me an advantage because my products do deliver good flavor, texture, and freshness. The products that I baked are not frozen and they don't contain additives. The prices are pretty much the same, so people will get a better product for the same price.

At the beginning of this bussiness, we would be a team of 5 people. Two people are going to in charge of the cakes, cupcakes and cake decoration. 1 person is going to take care of social media, website, taking the orders of the customers, and the delivery services. The other 2 will be in charge of baking the other products. This will be at the beginning, but I have to say that I would like to expand my business and I may need more employees by that time. I would like to have a bigger kitchen and more equipment such as ovens and hand mixers to have better handling of the products especially when I have to manage large quantities of products.

The three minor elements

The most important resource for my business the recipes that I have created over the years and the experience that my team and I have in the baking field.

The next opportunity that I would like to tackle with my current idea will be to have a physical location where I can have a bigger kitchen to bake large quantities of different products.

For me, it will be a dream to have this venue. I would like to create more recipes, but these products will be healthy options for people with diabetes or maybe some kind of allergies. 

Feedback and Changes

The feedback I received in my last post it was pretty positive. People mentioned that they have a better picture of my bakery and the products that I would be selling. They said that the breakdown of my prices was good. In addition, one of the comments was about creating loyal customers and building a good relationship with customers. I think this is true because I talked about the hard competition that I have with other recognized bakeries such as Publix bakery and build loyal customers will help me to grow and create a loyal community. This comment made me include a reward loyal program in the innovation section where I explained that customers will get points every time that they buy one of my products. Depending on the number of points they have they will get discounts or free products in the future. This will help me to create a community and increase loyalty. In addition, I talked about in the future a would like to have a bigger kitchen with more equipment where I can handle bigger quantities of baked products. This would help me to participate in bigger events or sell my products to other venues such as minimarkets.