When all is said and done...

Gryphon’s den was surprisingly a great experience. Although I was terrified to present, once I was finished and could relax, it was awesome to see everyone’s ideas and how far they have come over the past 8 weeks. What I found most interesting was listening to the pitches that I had heard a couple of weeks ago and hearing how much they did or did not change in relation to the feedback given.

      After listening to everyone’s idea’s there were many that I would definitely invest in. One of which was the U-charge. I thought that this idea was great. When listening to their speech I was intrigued, rather than jumping right into their idea, they began with a little humor, which was refreshing to see. After the humor passed there was a little bit of a fumble, but they managed to come back with a bang. I can’t blame them for the fumble; because frankly I’m surprised I was sick on the stage. There is something about presenting with no extra help to guide your thoughts that makes your mind completely freeze and forget your entire thought process.

For those of you reading this and were not at Gryphon’s den I will give you a little break down of what exactly U-charge is. This product almost acts as a pedometer in the sense that as you move the U-charge monitors this movement and begins to charge itself through this movement. However, it doesn’t stop there, even when you are not moving this product will create a pendulum effect and charge itself. With this charged device, you can then charge any cellphone in order to bring it back to life. Clearly I can not describe this product as well as the group did.. but you get the gist right?

The reason why this stood out to me is because we have all been there. Everyone has struggled to keep that last 14% of your battery alive for as long as possible, and does it ever work… NO! You end up with a dead phone, no way to contact anyone to tell them you’re phone is dead and it always seems to happen at the worst time. I know that I have seen a lot of products out there that basically do the same thing, but the way that this device is charged and the fact that it could charge itself when you stop moving stood out in my mind.

All in all, everyone did an amazing job and I’m very proud of my fellow Gryph’s for all the effort they put into their ideas and nerves they’ve overcome after presenting.

Finally, I obviously can't put up this post without commending my team as well. We worked so hard on our project and definitely came a long way in the process. We worked so well together and am proud of every single one of them... its been fun ;) 

Goodbye EZ Menu

Leading up to our final pitch and the end of the year my group members and myself were all faced with an overwhelming amount of work. From essays and exams to group assignments and presentations, we were all presented with our last chance to end successfully in our courses. While tackling all of these obstacles at the same time as finding time to practice our speech was difficult. Although we had practiced this pitch once before in front of our classmates, it was difficult to attack the presentation again with our ideas in mind and still trying to incorporate those ideas of our classmates.

The day of the actual presentation, in my opinion was awful! I had more butterflies in my stomach than ever before and thought I was going to be sick multiple times before presenting. I had already made one presentation that day that went amazing, but for some reason when it came to the pitch I could not get over my nerves. Even while presenting I completely blacked out and was shaking! This is very rare that this happens to me… but something about pitching with no presentation made me nervous. Luckily my group member had his part perfectly memorized and was more than confident for the both of us. As a result, I believe that our pitch did go quite well given my nerves, however, it definitely could have gone much better with more confidence from my end.

Feedback

During our pitch a couple of weeks ago, specific groups were assigned to critique our presentation of EZ Menu. As we worked on our pitch and our idea in general over the semester, we thought we had a great idea and that we could easily express it to our fellow students. After reviewing what our classmates had to say about our presentation it was easy to see that we were a little more confident about our idea than our potential end consumers. It was definitely helpful to hear what our classmates thought about our idea, however, it was definitely hard to hear their critiques. Along with any pitch given, there will always be some people who absolutely hate your idea while others love it. While reading the feedback we received it was clear that those who did not like the idea had their reasons.

One critique that stood out the most to us was that our end consumers did not like the idea of being allowed to order their own meals. They informed us that there could be many glitches within this idea including customers sending the wrong order to the kitchen or customers being upset at the lack of interaction with the server which makes or breaks the experience for many. In addition, many restaurants decrease their server’s wage due to the number of tips received. With lack of interaction between consumers and servers, these tips can be at risk compromising the devotion servers may have to their diners.  After going through this feedback as a group, we began to realize that the lack of communication with the server could hinder our idea.

As a result, instead of continuing with this idea, we decided to eliminate the ability to place your own order, and increase the interactions between consumers and servers through the “call server button.” This way consumers are not left stretching their necks to find their waitress when needed, and can easily page when attention is desired.

Pitch Perfect... or not

Yesterday was the big day! The day we were told to pitch our idea of EZ Menu to our class. Leading up to this big event, we brainstormed many great ideas, all of which we wanted to include in our pitch in order to get our classmates as excited about our product as we are. However, given a time frame of only 3 minutes to wow our classmates made it impossible to include all of our ideas. As a result, we decided to allocate one person, Eric, to create the pitch. This way, with only one mind and one idea, we believed our pitch could be narrowed down to three minutes easily. In the end, this wasn’t the case.

About an hour before we had to present, Eric’s rehearsal pitch ended at a total of 5 minutes and carried way too much detail. As a group we worked on condensing the facts to present only our key findings that we believed the class could relate to. In the end we had a great pitch ready! When it came down to the actual presentation, along with any performance, nerves began to take over and although our main idea got across, a few key parts were left out.

As the questions began to roll in, it was obvious that the missing parts of the pitch were critical to the audience’s full understanding. Although there were a few mistakes, the class seemed to really like our product and the idea we brought to the table. The questions that were posed were great and really helped us further understand what must be added to our final pitch at Gryphon’s den.

After hearing our critiques, we have decided that we should definitely continue to include our demonstration of the two different dining experiences (EZ Menu vs. Regular Menu). One thing we will have to further explain is the capability of the tabletop menu and present with greater confidence including an upbeat delivery of our product.  This way we can guarantee consumers interest in our presentation and relate to the problems we are fixing with our product.

WHO WANTS THIS GIANT MENU


When you could have.......









A Touchscreen Tabletop Menu!!!!

One Foot Rooted (Pivot)

As regular diners and marketing students, we have experienced and observed many complications while dining out. Whether it be an absent waitress, mixed-up orders, cluttered tables and much more, without a positive dining experience, customers are less likely to return. With this in mind, EZ-menu began with the idea of changing the concept of consumers negative dining experiences into a more positive, easy going, controlled atmosphere.

After taking a deeper look into the concept of implementing this product, gears began to shift during the initial design of the product. With EZ Menu originally being created as a tablet for each diner, it slowly progressed into electronic glass tabletop.  Since the idea of this product was to reduce clutter on tables and allow consumers to control their dining experience, it became obvious that tablets will not fully eliminate all current problems. By creating an electronic tabletop, waitresses are able to choose the number of menus presented, where the menus will be placed. Furthermore, consumers will be able to access each menu and application at the click of a button, or turn off the tabletop in order to create fewer distractions.

            As a group, our business model also began to shift when looking at who our greatest consumer segments will be. As mentioned in my last post, we had quite a difficult time understanding our consumers in their everyday lives. As a result, our model began to pivot in the sense that we fully began to clarify who our segments were and allowed us to further understand/recognize the needs of our consumers. This pivot was necessary because we were beginning to have a one-track mind, that this product would be beneficial if put in place, rather than focusing on who it was specifically going to benefit and why. In relation to a quote by Eric Ries, this pivot allowed our group to “…test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy and engine of growth,” bringing about our new hypothesis that EZ Menu creates a positive influence on individual restaurant owners by creating a new focus on their gains at the same time as reducing consumers pain.