25A- What's Next?

Existing Market

• Step 1: As a company that packages food, we would not actually be producing the food at first. I think that once we move into selling this product in grocery stores, we could also begin producing the food, as well as packaging the food in smaller portions. 
• Step 2: Both agreed that my company's success would rely on its marketing. They didn't really have any suggestions to improve the business in any ways that aren't being utilized now. They also agreed that the company has a lot of potential for growth with the company's product. One said that a possible next step would to create recipes and cooking products to go with the ingredients. 
• The plan for my business is to begin on a local level. The company would not actually produce the food products, but would rather have it grown and produced by the farms, and then packaged by the company and sold to grocery stores. After beginning in local grocery stores, we would spread our distribution circle. We would focus our efforts on college campuses in order to target single individuals that want to cook. As the company continues to grown, we would begin to grow and produce our own food. Once our food and it's smaller packaging begins to spread and be a success, we could sell other products. One major possible success is the idea of a cookbook. Since our product focuses on single individuals that enjoy cooking. Since many college students struggle to cook, a cookbook would not only allow for easy ingredient measurements, with our products, but also a connection to our ingredients and their use. 

New Market

• The opposite market that I could target is families. 
• My product could benefit families when one individual has an allergy or if they have a child that is a picky eater. The smaller packaged food would allow the parents to serve something to the family, and have something different for the other family member. Smaller packaged products could also benefit the family by allowing easily packed lunches. With each product already separated into personal sized packages, food that doesn't need to be cooked can just be dropped into their lunch box.
• One of the individuals I interviewed was not very interested in the product at their stage in life. They said they would've been interested in it earlier in life when they did not have a family, but now it's generally more practical to buy in larger amounts. They said that as we begin to grow and make our own products, we could be successful selling both larger and smaller portioned food. The other individual has a child that is a very picky eater and they were very interested in the product. They felt that they could cook a full meal for the rest of the family and replace all or parts of the meal the child dislikes with the single portioned food. 
• I learned a lot from my interviews in this market. They didn't change the beginning of my business plan, but it may have changed some future steps in my business plan, such as adding to our product line. Since this market was kind of a long stretch, I was actually surprised that someone agreed with my original logic behind this market's possible interest. I expected both to respond like the first individual I interviewed. Overall, I felt that this market might actually be a future market to target. The beneficial aspect of my product is that it is stocked in grocery stores, so a large range of demographics have access to it, even if we're not specifically targeting other groups besides young singles. This may have not majorly shifted my business plan, it did somewhat shift my marketing plan. If we make the product available in stores with a variety of individuals, we can do a marketing study and target the individuals that need it most. Overall, this definitely did not replace my original, existing market, but it actually may have added to it instead.