Problems for the Huskies

In an attempt to launch Hungry Huskies, we have come across quite a few problems. Since our last post, Robert and Conner were able to go to Costco and buy the inventory we needed to launch. The first problem we came across was on the issue of storage. Since we were denied access to the lockers, we decided to temporally store our inventory in Mrs. Starnes's cubicle. However, this plan failed because they saw us bringing in the snacks and told us food wasn't allowed to be stored anywhere but the Igloo. In a final attempt to store our snacks, Mrs. Starnes reached out to the Parent's Association to ask for access to the Igloo. Thankfully, they quickly approved our request and we were able to secure room in the Igloo to store our goods. We tried to make an announcement so we could launch sales but the student announcements at town meeting this week were both canceled for other speakers. Below is a picture of one of the flyers that we put around the school to make everyone aware that Hungry Huskies will be launching soon! Since we weren't able to launch sales this week, a goal our team has is to launch sales the week following our Thanksgiving break. I think although we have been faced with a lot of problems, we have worked hard to overcome them and should aim to continue to improve our efficiency and work ethic through lots of effort.

The Grind

Recently, we have been very busy prepping for our opening. We just ordered the food, drinks and materials we will need to run successfully! On thursday April 2nd, we presented our business pitch to some members from the school including our headmaster, business reps and other adults. Our presentation went very well and we finally received an answer about the igloo. The leadership board has come up with an idea to work with the parents association by possibly offering a 10 day trial to figure out if everything would work with regard to sharing The Igloo with The Grind Coffee Shop. We have our coffee machines, hot water carriers here and our other inventory is being shipped to the school this week. We have decided that we want to open this coming week. We pivoted from our original idea to open immediately after spring break and decided it would be more efficient if we opened by next week. We are also working on reorganizing our business pitch to turn into a more efficient document to give the leadership board. When ordering our food, we realized that with some companies we can subscribe to their supplies and gain discounts in the future with reordering our supplies. The bottom picture below is our logo that we created for The Grind. We have decided to have our logo printed out and placed on each of our cups, but want to wait until we create some profit to make this investment. The picture on the top is a list of our profit and purchase prices, along with an overall average profit from our intended inventory.

The Grind

This week was all about preparing for our presentation for Mr.Reed, Mr.Thomas, Mrs.Williams and many other teachers. We took the mini business plan we made the previous week and decided what were the most important points from it. We also discussed what would be the most valuable points from our lean canvas and what would be the best presentation format to use. We ended up choosing Prezi to display our presentation for the teachers and picked the most important parts from our business plans. All this planning was done on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Friday, we went through a dry run of out presentation and prepared ourselves for difficult questions and problems that could occur or be brought up in our meeting. We were not completely prepared for our presentation, because we only have five or six slides, so we will need to make sure that is done by the time we return from Spring Break. Our initial launch date had been immediately following the return of Spring Break, but now we have realized it will need to be pushed back a few days in order to meet and make decisions with regards to location and supplies.

Food? Food.

Today was a very important day for our group because we discussed everything that needs to be done by our launch date. We have planned to be ready to launch the day we leave for spring break and then actually launch when we return from Spring Break. Annie informed us about another way to fill the Keurig machines, tea bags that are designed to fit in the spot, and would cost 31 cents a cup instead of 61 cents a cup. We are talking about what we need to order, there needs to be machines, food, drinks, location and other supplies by our planned launch date. We are nervous to buy anything until we have heard back from people about what we are aloud to use and do on campus. Another major thing we discussed was an opening and closing check list. We need to create a set of rules that are for the person who is in charge of getting everything ready and putting everything away when we are opening and closing the shop. We also visited the igloo to see where possible places that we could store our supplies. We discovered several large cabinets that are empty that would be an ideal place to store out stuff, we also found some empty racks that would be suitable for us to place the igloo supplies while our store is open. We are also discussing the name for our company, Food?Food. is no longer ideal for us. We also found out there are warmers in the igloo that would be great for our bagels. Today was really good for our group because we started to really work and started to comprehend what needs to be done in the next week and a half.

Where we plan to store our supplies 

Heaters and Warmers we could use

Another possible storage place 

Where we could place Igloo's supplies 

Overall look of storage we could use 

Husky BuyPass - New Affiliate Marketing Program

This week we have come up with our company name - Husky BuyPass. In addition to the name, we have also purchased the domain huskybuypass.com and plan to host our website there when it is developed. We also presented our Lean Canvas and overall feel confident in our business so far. We believe one of the best parts of this service will be when people need to buy books for school, as we'll be able to make them easy to find and highlight the cheapest prices.

Future plans for next week are to:
-Find out what products people like to buy online.
-Build the website.

Food? Food.

Over this past week we have met a few times, and have talked about choosing a launch date for our business. It is very important to us that we are ready to open and that everything is prepared when this happens. We have decided that we will be completely prepared to open the day before we leave for break, and plan to open a day or two after we return. We have also discussed all the individual topics of running a business that we need to be aware of before we can start and run our business. The drive we worked on discussed risk, management, supplies and other essential topics that need to be carefully considered before we move on. We also talked about possible errors and problems that could arise after our business opens. We discussed competition, who was supplying our customers before us and what will happen to them when we are open. We discussed interest, how our business sounds to an outsider who has never seen or heard about it before. This week was essential to our business because we started to work at our core foundation and understand the work we need to do in order to create a successful and strong business.