Venture Concept No 1

Being a vegetarian is very easy until I go out with my family and friends to eat. I sometimes even bring my own food. I knew that there must be others out there who face this issue and so my business concept is one where it’s beneficial to the environment and to people.

I want to present the idea of a vegan friendly restaurant but that is also friendly to people who still eat animal products (milk, eggs, honey). I understand that this phrase may come as a surprise but I want to give my customers a lot of variability. Many people believe that a vegan diet is restricting and boring but I believe quite the opposite, and I want to culture this idea into my restaurant.  This restaurant will have a soy substitute for any entree. Soybeans are a species of legumes that contain as much protein as red or white meat. This is an argument that has been going on for so long “Many opponents of a vegetarian diet say that meat consumption is healthful and humane, and that producing vegetables causes many of the same environmental problems as producing meat. They also argue that humans have been eating and enjoying meat for 2.3 million years“ I believe that when my customer’s people are given the option to eat something healthy (and still delicious) they may opt in for that option. I believe with this statement “In Western culture vegetarianism dates back to Ancient Greece. The mathematician Pythagoras (570 BC - 495 BC) advocated vegetarianism; a meatless diet was commonly called the "Pythagorean diet" until the term vegetarian became popular during the 1800s. [120] The philosopher Plato (428 BC - 348 BC) described a vegetarian diet as "divinely ordained."

“ I also want to open a bodega in the front of the restaurant so people can buy vegan snacks, produce, and any other kind of healthy and affordable food that they may not find at a grocery store. This way, I would get two kinds of business, people who want to buy food very quickly, and people who want to sit down and have table service. My important resource or “secret sauce” is that I have the knowledge of how to open a business already. I have created a few successful businesses and I have the drive to do it again. I also know a lot about nutrition and overall health of the human body. I know what it healthy and what kinds of foods will help with any kind of issue a person may have. For example, I know what a person should eat if they want lose weight, what they should eat if they want to grow their long. I myself have lost 15 pounds in a healthy way following a vegan diet and am very happy with the way I feel. I want my customers to know how amazing it feels to not eat animals or animal products. The length that this window will be open is large due to the fact that more and more people are switching to veganism or vegetarianism. There are some areas in the worlds where most people are vegetarian (Northern India for example) and also some areas in the United States where there are a lot more vegetarians than others. San Francisco and the Bay Area in California is notorious for they’re healthy eating habits, but Austin Texas is a place filled with avid meat-eaters. If I open my restaurant, it would need to be in area where I know it would get good business, not in a place where people love barbeque. A 2012 Gallup poll found that approximately 5% of Americans (15,695,702 people) considered themselves to be vegetarian, and 2% (6,278,281 people) considered themselves to be vegan. [127] Total US meat consumption in 2012 was estimated to be 165.9 pounds per person—18.1 pounds fewer than the 2004 high of 184 pounds per person. [126]

 What’s next for this venture I think would be to make a menu, hire staff, and find a chef who can create what I envision for this restaurant. I need to find a realtor who can find me a good location for my restaurant in an area where people are health conscience. I also need to find a good produce man to deliver fresh produce each day, as each meal is vegetable based. The next opportunity I want to tackle with my current innovation is to make the logo and over all design concept for the restaurant. Ambience is everything for if a restaurant fails or succeeds. It needs to be a place where people want to go, and not where people would go. People would want to have the need to instagram/facebook share the food provided to them so theyre friends would go aswell. Another way of creating a large customer base is to hire someone to instagram a plate of your food and when they geo-tag it will create a lot of buzz for the restaurant. Many places such as doughnut shops, milkshake restaurants and bars are exploding due to this strategy that there are lines of a 100 people for a place that only has 8 tables inside.  I really hope to open this restaurant in hopes that it will inspire others to become vegetarian, even if it means only eating meat a few days a week rather than everyday. By not supporting the meat industry, the entire environment and human race will be healthier and happy.

The feedback from my last attempt at this venture was very helpful. Someone who commented also ended up being a vegetarian and told me that they appreciate the idea of a veggie friendly. Other commenters understood why I was doing it, but are meat eaters so I don’t think they could see why not eating animals is important. What I changed in my pitch was that I am going to also have a bodega in the restaurant with a small cafeteria for people who do not want to have a sit down meal.