Venture Concept 1

The Opportunity

Athletes often need to eat healthy, balanced meals to maximize performance. However, many athletes are unable to prepare wholesome meals on a regular basis due to challenges associated with busy schedules and demanding training regimens.

The problem is particularly prominent for collegiate student-athletes and young professionals who do not prioritize grocery shopping, meal prepping, and spending time in the kitchen. Frozen meals, ordering take-out, or simply eating snacks in place of meals are common ways student-athletes (and people in general) satisfy their hunger. However, these alternatives are neither desirable or sustainable, as they do not provide adequate nutritional value to fuel and recover from intense workouts.

In addition, there are several meal delivery services on the market, but none of these services are geared directly toward busy athletes. Many require adequate cooking knowledge, take a significant amount of preparation time, and do not provide the nutritional value athletes need. This creates an unoccupied market niche.

The market for wholesome, quick to prepare meals exists across the United States, but it is concentrated near universities and cities (with a high concentration of physically active individuals). The window for opportunity will remain open until someone provides a viable solution.

Innovation.

My solution, a meal delivery service, will provide balanced, quick to prepare meals to customers. Dinners will be delivered in weekly packages with options to include grab-and-go lunches and healthy snacks. A variety of plans will be offered on a subscription basis. Customers will manage their plan and choose meal options online, then the food will be delivered to their doorstep once a week.

Every meal will be specifically formulated to include plenty of complex carbohydrates, healthy fats, and protein for optimal performance and recovery. They will be approved by a performance dietician for nutritional composition. In addition, portion sizes and ratios will be customized based on every athletes specific needs and goals (lean, maintain, gain, etc).

Assuming the average meal costs $5.50 to make and deliver, we will sell for $8.  That adds up to only $32 per week for 4 healthy dinners for the customer and a 45% profit margin for the company.

Venture Concept. 

My innovation, a customizable meal delivery service for physically active individuals will take the effort out of eating healthy. This makes it a very desirable option, as customers can be confident they will have something good to eat and allowing them to focus more on training and being successful in life.

Customers would see this as a great option because it would be an immense time and energy saver. Convenience is the name of the game these days, and when you couple convenience with quality you have a real winner. Athletes would be eating healthy without even thinking about it!

An effective promotions strategy would be used to prompt customers to consider my service. Athletes already using a meal delivery service would consider switching to mine for a few main reasons.

·       The benefits of having balanced meals formulated specifically to fuel workouts. Popular meal delivery services, such as Hello Fresh, Home Chef, and Blue Apron, do not live up to the nutritional caliber athletes ultimately should have, and they rank lower on the healthfulness scale.

·       Options to include healthy snacks and grab-and-go lunches, which creates extra value

·       Lower prices. Hello Fresh, for example, is priced between $9 and $10 per person per meal. At approximately $8 per meal, the cost savings would add up for my service.

·       Switching costs would be very low, so there is no barrier to changing services.

Special recyclable packaging would also offer augmented benefits for my products, as they would be delivered promptly in packaging with motivational phrases on it.  This differentiates my service in a simple way and prompts customer delight. Exceptional customer service, driven by the desire to help other athletes, would also set my service apart.

To start, I would simply start cooking and delivering meals in the Gainesville area by hand. As my venture grows, I would need to hire kitchen help, a distributor, organizational executives, and eventually a marketing team.

Minor Stuff Worth Mentioning

It will be very difficult for competitors to copy my success because of my “unfair advantage:” being a student-athlete at a division 1 school myself. Personal experience, my fellow Gators’ experiences, and constant contact with prototypical consumers will allow me to understand my market very well and tailor my business to fit my customer’s needs. It also gives me access to a variety of resources and an expansive social network revolving around athletic excellence.

What’s next? Once I find success with my meal delivery service, I will work on creating a community of inspiration for the athletes in my customer base. Besides weekly meals, I will work on creating value for them in new ways to further help them become better athletes. Perhaps this will involve partnerships with other firms.

Within the next five years, I want to create a huge buzz in the athletic world, and I want most serious athletes to recognize my brand.  My vision is to help athletes achieve their goals through delicious and nutritious food, and this first venture will allow me to do so.