SIZZLE
The story of going through ambiguity to develop something brings value
In my LEAP (Leading Entrepreneurial Action Project), we had to build a prototype about to launch starting from defining a pain point that it helps to solve. My team members were gathered under the interest in the idea of using drone to make delivery faster. The pitch was presented excitingly by Akriti - a member we chose to work with. Seeing it as an opportunity, however, we did not know where to start and which industry we are in other than the fact that working with drone is so cool. That was a down time in my team since we all felt lost. In every meeting, there were only questions unanswered and the tension that where do we go? That made us even doubt ourselves why we chose this project and why starting it from the beginning.
Once each member tried to pick an area to focus, we got conflict in our different directions. Eventually with the involvement of our falcuty, we calmed down and got to narrow down into food and pharmaceutial industries where delivery is happening the most. But again, we better pick one, what is that? We chose to start researching pharmaceutical and presented our first pinup:
Surprisingly, we got very negative feedbacks that the problem is not yet defined, that the concept was too broad, that we were too much in love with drone and that the presentation is poor. That was a very low and not-exciting-as-expected start for our team. Having said that, we got together and considered the feedbacks as room for improvement, we tried to dig deeper to reconsider pharmaceutical and explore food industry. After that, it became clearer that there are more order for food delivery so there is a bigger market here, more importantly, there is a more sense of urgency: "I want to get my food as soon as possible". Despite the fact that other teams already proceeded to interview potential target, the process of defining the pain point thorouly brought us more down to earth, to be more realistic without being stuck around with drone, we affirmed that drone can be one of the solutions but not the only one and does not have to be our destination.
After deciding to focus on food, we drilled down to a specific problem which is the most potential to solve.
Outstandingly, when we analyzed online reviews, we saw that people complaint the most about waiting time and foods arrive cold. And since we cannot control the traffic which mainly causes long delivery time, we chose to solve 'foods come not hot' problem.
So, why compromising with cold food
while you can still have a 'restaurant' experience through delivery?
The pain point
Many people find delivered foods come not hot and my team want to solve this problem. So, how might we make food hot during delivery?
By conducting researches our team realized the pain point that while many customers expect to get good food after waiting for delivery, the food sometimes come with low quality (just lukewarm or even cold). Then digging deeper into delivery process involving delivery platform, restaurants and drivers, we understood that the reasons that lead to this low-quality problem is long delivery time due to traffic or waiting time. And since traffic or waiting time are unexpected, we have been trying to control another factor which is delivery package to keep food hot while being delivered.
Prototyping
Starting by questions:How does temperature of food decrease over time? What is temperature of just-cooked food? And the hypothesis that: if a hand warmer can be activated simple and warm your hand, maybe something like that can warm the food? We decided to conduct some experiements to see how the temperature of food will be improved by using food warmer and where should the warmer be put: inside or outside packages?
The first 2 experiments showed that something like hand warmer cannot boost the temperature a lot, although we have not known to what degree the temperature is lost through delivery. This left us to conduct interview with a chef whom have cooked and maintained temperature for our school cafeteria in 20 years and actually ordered food to measure temperature lost:
Follow that, with around 35F lost, to brige that gap, we talked to thermo dynamics expert to discover more solutions for creating and maintaing heat. Having said that, we did not forgot to evaluate current existing solution which is insulated bag. By using it to cover food in delivery as an experiment, we learnt that it just helped to maintain the heat not to boost temperature and so the food has mot arrived hot as expected. Not to mention, the delivery drivers tend to ignore using the bag due to inconvenience and lack of motivation.
In an approach to technical challenges, we also did an experiment using ice melt and water but the temperature reaches at very low, around 90F while we seek for 150F minimum.
Not yet giving up, we keep searching for solution and lately found out exothermic reaction which can help to create heat up to 130F, and with that, we can combine with insulated material for container to ensure the optimal heat of food arrived.
Although tentatively done with prototyping at this point, we struggled at convincing the restaurant to buy this since its cost is estimated at 40 cents, which is 4 times comparing to the normal one they are using. Despite getting the complaints from customers, the restaurant does not see it's their responsibility to solve this while there is involvement of delivery process.
It was such an intensive learning experience in 3 months about both teamwork and starting a venture. Lots of pain mixed with aha moments. The process of getting something come out of the dark requires lots of effort, motivation, passion and most importantly persistence. Above all, we learnt that don't make something that no one is interested in buying and given a huge demand for something, get a good team to develop a good product!
