Here is what we believed at the beginning of the week...
1) At the beginning of the week we believe that most of our potential customers spent 30 minutes or less per weekday on dinner preparation. We also believed that most of our potential customers would prefer a ready-to-eat family style dinner vs. a meal preparation kit.
2) Secondly, we also believed that busy working class families with kids who want to eat healthy dinners on a consistent basis will subscribe for an organic, freshly prepared, ready-to-eat meal at least two times a week if it was offered at a right price point.
3) Lastly, we believed that the customer’s buying decision doesn't change much if they pick up dinner from the school office or from the office reception on their way back home vs. getting it delivered at their home.
Here is what we did...
We believed that feedback about what a potential customer would want best would be most accurately captured if we spoke with them (customers that fit the target customer profile) directly. So we went down to Happy Days Pre-school in Cupertino and spoke with a 10 mothers on their current weekday dinner habits and what their preferences might be for a weekday dinner service.
In addition we sent out a survey via email to a select group of mothers and other family members to better understand current patterns as well as expectations for a weekday dinner service.
Here is what we learned.
When we reviewed both our survey results reflecting on what the mothers we had met at Happy Days had told us, those findings were in alignment for the most part, the core consistency in the message was a key part of why we felt this exercise was particularly useful in developing our idea even further. More specifically, we learnt the following:
1) From our survey results, 21% of the dual earning families with annual incomes of >200k don't even cook during weekdays. Of the families that do cook, roughly 25% spend less than 30 minutes per day cooking, with 57% cooking their dinner within 30-60 minutes in total.
From our interviews:
Parents want to give fresh food, and they often do some basic preparation over the weekend for the weekday dinners. Priya (mother of 2 two and five year olds) for example, mentioned that even though she prefers to cook on weekdays sometimes she has to rely on take outs or the meal she had prepared over the weekend. She voiced a concern around the freshness of the food, but hadn't really spent much time thinking about what potential alternatives could help with her weekday meal preparation.
2) Again from our survey results we clearly identify that 45% of them shop at organic stores vs. regular grocery stores and they visit the organic store around 3 times per month. In addition they 35% spend more than $100 per week and 15% spend more than $150 for their weekly organic shopping. Lastly, we also noted, that nearly 20% of respondents spent more than $100 on take-outs for the week, however, we were not able to identify which of those who spent on take outs did not visit grocery stores at all (meaning they ate out most of the time).
Speaking with Shilpa (mother of 2 kids, aged 5 and 6), she mentioned that when groceries are done, sometimes they are already past their best or spoilt before she has the chance to cook them for the week. Additionally, sometimes she lacked of some ingriedients to cook a complete mean or a healthy recipe to put the meal together and had to pass on cooking a meal. The reality of waste seemed to be very relevant amongst almost all the mothers that wanted to provide consistently healthy meals for their family and the cycle of guilt in eating out was another major theme that was repeated multiple times from various different sources.
3) When it came to quantifying the option of food being delivered to schools vs. delivery to the home what most of the mothers we spoke to said was that they didn't consider picking their meal up from school to be a significant deterrant to the service. The reasons they cited were that they had to come to school regardless to pick their children. In some cases they preferred picking the meal up at school because, they found it to be a safer option. Existing services did offer specific delivery times to the home but they were often inconsistent.
1) From our survey results, 21% of the dual earning families with annual incomes of >200k don't even cook during weekdays. Of the families that do cook, roughly 25% spend less than 30 minutes per day cooking, with 57% cooking their dinner within 30-60 minutes in total.
From our interviews:
Parents want to give fresh food, and they often do some basic preparation over the weekend for the weekday dinners. Priya (mother of 2 two and five year olds) for example, mentioned that even though she prefers to cook on weekdays sometimes she has to rely on take outs or the meal she had prepared over the weekend. She voiced a concern around the freshness of the food, but hadn't really spent much time thinking about what potential alternatives could help with her weekday meal preparation.
2) Again from our survey results we clearly identify that 45% of them shop at organic stores vs. regular grocery stores and they visit the organic store around 3 times per month. In addition they 35% spend more than $100 per week and 15% spend more than $150 for their weekly organic shopping. Lastly, we also noted, that nearly 20% of respondents spent more than $100 on take-outs for the week, however, we were not able to identify which of those who spent on take outs did not visit grocery stores at all (meaning they ate out most of the time).
Speaking with Shilpa (mother of 2 kids, aged 5 and 6), she mentioned that when groceries are done, sometimes they are already past their best or spoilt before she has the chance to cook them for the week. Additionally, sometimes she lacked of some ingriedients to cook a complete mean or a healthy recipe to put the meal together and had to pass on cooking a meal. The reality of waste seemed to be very relevant amongst almost all the mothers that wanted to provide consistently healthy meals for their family and the cycle of guilt in eating out was another major theme that was repeated multiple times from various different sources.
3) When it came to quantifying the option of food being delivered to schools vs. delivery to the home what most of the mothers we spoke to said was that they didn't consider picking their meal up from school to be a significant deterrant to the service. The reasons they cited were that they had to come to school regardless to pick their children. In some cases they preferred picking the meal up at school because, they found it to be a safer option. Existing services did offer specific delivery times to the home but they were often inconsistent.
As a result, this is what we are doing.
2) A relatively high percentage (45%) of Bay Area families shop at organic grocery stores, validate demand for organic food but cite concerns related to wastage through expiry. Those that do spend on organic food, spend about $150 dollars per week and gives some insight into what our aggregate pricing for the meal should be in order to convert organic grocery shoppers to happy Eat Delish subscribers.
3) Given our target customer base are families that tend to live in suburban areas, we see the opportunity to realize better unit economics through a hub delivery model where a minimum customer threshold is maintained, like schools and corporate locations.
List of mothers interviewed at Happy Days Pre-school
Priya Vartak - 35
Shilpa Bhave - 26
Susan Sabharwal - 30
Medha Bhutani - 36
Rashmi Nair - 30
Payal Singh - 33
Anureita Rao - 37
Heather Scouffas - 38
Andrea Duvall - 34
Key Survey Data Set
