29 - Venture Concept 2

OPPORTUNITY

My opportunity is people who would like to have an easier grocery shopping process, and who want to be able to easily plan out their meals to save time and money while shopping for groceries.

Why does this need exist? People need a convenient way to manage groceries. 

I think a major market for this type of opportunity is college students and young adults and parents, especially people who are busy and feel like they don’t have that much time for grocery shopping and cooking healthy meals. These are also the people who are more likely to be using mobile apps to streamline aspects of their lives. Based on interviews I conducted, I think that currently people who want to plan their meals will find recipe ideas from different sources and come into the store with a list or an idea of what ingredients they’re going to buy, however no one was particularly loyal to this and they were all open to the idea of using an app to make grocery shopping easier. I think this opportunity is good because it is definitely something that I myself and many people I know would love to have. There have already been some meal planning apps on the market, and I have tried them but they left me unsatisfied with what they offered, which is why I came up with my idea of an all-around grocery managing app. I think this opportunity will be open for maybe another year or two before an app like this is made.

INNOVATION/VENTURE CONCEPT

I would not consider my app to be that innovative, as there are already some meal apps. It is just a better version of those. A description of my idea is that it is an app that helps people manage their grocery shopping by letting them search from a database of healthy recipes, showing the nutrition information, then letting them select whichever recipes they want to make that week. They will be able to input any dietary restrictions and food preferences, such as high protein meals, meals with salmon, etc. as well as search based on how long the recipes would take if they want quicker recipes. If they want to meal prep, they can change how many servings they want to make so it will give them the correct quantities. Once they select what they want to make a shopping list will be generated with everything they need and how much it would cost at their various local grocery stores. This can help them better manage their budgets by knowing how much they will be spending on their meals beforehand. In addition, the app will pull up any coupons from their local grocery stores on any of the items that they need, which they can clip to use later in store. I would also like to further customize it so that people can input the groceries that they already have in their house. That way the app can show you recipes that will utilize some of those items, and they will not be on your shopping list. Or, you could search for recipes that will include items you specifically want to use up. 

How will I make money? I think the best way to make money on this app would be to design it so that some of the features are free for any users, like being able to search for meals and get grocery lists, but if they want to have the rest of the features, they would pay a monthly subscription.

I think that the majority of people who would use this app would go from not using any meal planning type app at all to using this, so there is not much competition or trying to get customers to switch from anything else. 

If this is an all-around grocery shopping app I think it would be important to partner with big grocery companies that could offer things such as instant grocery delivery and certain discounts to the customers. This would also be a huge advantage for the app as it is something that competitors can't really copy. 

If I were to launch this venture, ideally in 5 years I would have sold it and moved onto another venture. 

2. I looked through the feedback on my venture concept and "what's next" post. There was a lot of good feedback regarding partnering with grocery stores and having a delivery system with the app. I did not really receive any feedback on what I should change.