Soup and Bread was a fun company to work with. I had no knowledge of the food or restaurant industry before this project, so I found it cool to learn about a restaurant and its business model and compare it with different fast-casual restaurants.
Our team initially struggled with Soup and Bread; we thought that there were many problems going on (like a lack of technological infrastructure) but also not really one concrete problem at the same time (its sales were flatlining, but there wasn’t an immediate problem threatening Soup and Bread). However, with lots of brainstorming sessions, we managed to come up with different ideas for what Soup and Bread could do to expand, addressing multiple problems (technology, expansion obstacles, and new sources of revenue) at once.
I had lots of fun interviewing customers because it felt like I learned a lot about different people; everyone has different eating and dining habits, and surprisingly they tell you a lot about a person, like what they value or what they enjoy in their routines or lack of routines. These interviews helped me think of opportunities that Soup and Bread could capitalize on with expansion, like potentially taking advantage of partnering with Forkable, a corporate catering platform that many younger workers’ companies use for lunch. It also made me think about different obstacles, like balancing Soup and Bread’s current customer preferences (older customers who value routine and often go back to the same restaurants) with newer customer preferences (younger people who like to try new things and somehow also balance convenience with health).
I learned the most about evaluating a market, thinking deeper about business models, and also calculating financial projections (TAM, SAM, SOM). I didn’t know what any of these processes or terms meant before this class, so it was cool to learn about the concepts and immediately apply them to Soup and Bread in evaluating the potential in our strategies. I also learned more about evaluating hypotheses, and with more time (and if Soup and Bread actually existed), I think it’d be cool to actually implement a pop-up truck for Soup and Bread and evaluate if younger people would like it. I think it’d be fun to create marketing campaigns, plan menus, and think more about Soup and Bread’s branding during its expansion. Also, I’d be curious to see how the operations of Soup and Bread would evolve during our expansion, like hiring staff and improving our technological infrastructure.
