24A--Venture Concept No. 1

My Venture Concept

Opportunity--

My business opportunity is based of a need that The University of Florida does not have a chicken restaurant at Midtown.  Midtown is the most popular area in Gainesville that is not on campus.  It is home to bars, study services, and restaurants.  All of these are a crosswalk away from campus and are heavily populated for about 18 hours per day.  There is a sandwich place, a burger joint, a pizza stand, and a pita pit at midtown that are open til about 3 AM every night.  The one major type of American food that is missing is a chicken place.  Yes there is a Chick-Fil-A closeby but its hours do not coincide with the late night crowd at midtown.  A new chicken place would give all students a walking distance restaurant close to Study Edge, Off-Campus and On-Campus housing, the libraries, and the bars.  Because of the variety of things that our new chicken place would be close to, all UF students as well as faculty and nearby residents have this need for a chicken restaurant; although, I did form this business concept with a particular customer in mind--the drunk college student who needs food after a long night at the bars.  Many students patronize the other restaurants at mid as well as order UberEats.  Adding a chicken place would allow us to jump into this market.  Along with the late night crowd customers can come in after studying at nearby Lib West or Study Edge.  Customers can also takeout or dine-in after walking from their dorm or apartment. The opportunity has no limits as to who it will serve even though it is targeted at a specific audience.  Customers are not satisfying this need now, and loyalty to one of the other restaurants at midtown is not very prevalent, as I have asked many students and I know this from experience.  The opportunity exists because of the open real estate at Midtown, and will be open as long as there are vacant properties.

Innovation--

As far as innovation goes, there really is not much to consider with my business opportunity.  I want to open a chicken place to get in the midtown market.  We plan to serve wings, tenders, fried chicken, nuggets, and sides like fries and mac and cheese, all for a fair price around what you would pay for chicken at Chick-Fil-A, Popeyes, or Zaxby's.  Part of our current plan is to deliver to areas in a close radius to the restaurant--dorms, fraternity and sorority houses, and apartments around campus.  Having a delivery service will help us cater to lazy college kids.  Another innovation I plan on implementing will be an efficient food preparation method, one similar to McDonald's in its infancy.  It is important to me to be as innovative as we can with our service concept to make up for our lack of innovation in the product itself.

Venture Concept--

Customers will buy our chicken not for any innovation but because we will be an option to them whether they are on campus or not, we will be close by.  Our location and hours will be out biggest innovation because no one else is doing what we will be doing.  Taking a look at our competitors, Chick-Fil-A is truly the only one.  Chick-Fil-A is a couple blocks away so it is not as close to the heart of campus like we will be.  It also is only open until 8 PM and is closed on Sundays.  As for the other competitors at midtown, we simply need to be an option of students.  As previously mentioned, location plays a huge part in our business plan.  In addition to location, we want to produce fresh, hot chicken faster than the competitors.  These are the two biggest aspects that will help us to succeed.  As far as employees go, we only need line workers and delivery people to produce our product.  However, I also plan to employ marketing and advertising majors to help us gain an edge in advertising and making deals for students.

Our unfair advantage is being located at Midtown.  We will be  a good option for 18 hours a day as I said earlier.  People will want to eat at our place simply because it's close to campus and close to apartments and fraternity and sorority row.  At night, people will takeout after spending time at the midtown bars.  We will be a destination for students going to and from the libraries.  Our location is a crucial part of the opportunity.  It truly would not exist if we were planning on opening a chicken place on archer or 34th. 

I previously mentioned that our innovation will hopefully come in our assembly and kitchen style, much like McDonald's in its early days.  If we can create something repeatable we can grow our company, but this is not part of our business success plan just yet.  As for our existing customers, we hope to create food that becomes a part of the Gainesville food experience.  When you eat here, we want you to come back and look forward to coming back again.

In five years, we would like to be thriving as a part of midtown, Gainesville, and the UF community.  I hope to be a partner of UF athletics and really be special to students and residents of Gainesville.  This business, if successful, may seem to be a franchisable or growable business.  I have not thought that far because no matter how successful we might become, I feel as though it can be owed to the location and market.  In other words, I would be reluctant to grow the company if an opportunity similar to the opportunity that formed the restaurant in Gainesville were not available.