the story of yumbox: a start-up trying to revolutionize the way we cook & eat!

Yumbox has two grand objectives:
1. Make the world tastier
2. Let the world fall in love with cooking

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Meeting with DBA

Department of Business Affairs and Licensing

I met with the DBA over in City Hall on Friday to learn more about the licenses I will need to stay on my preferred side of bars. Turns out I will need a retail food establishment license, which will take 2-3 weeks, $600, and an inspection of our kitchens. This will keep me on the good side of the city. My steps for next week are to meet with the Secretary of the State office to find out how to keep the State government happy, find out what federal bodies I need to contact, and meet with the IJ Clinic to check in with them. Then barring any surprises, I will set up the LLC the week after.

Fox and Obel

Moving forward with packaging

I'm a great believer in not reinventing the wheel, so I went to Fox and Obel's to see how they package and present their food. I took a lot of pictures, and brought them to Alliance Paper and Food Services. A sales rep of theirs helped me identify all the packaging types, and I should be receiving samples on Wednesday or Thursday. We are shooting to do our first product test on Friday. The plan is to prepare all the ingredients for a meal, investigate packaging options, package, and send the meal off to friends to try. Below are some pictures of the packaging methods I liked.

Packaging Pictures






Packaging Pictures
We will need labels both for the exterior of our package and for individual ingredients, Below are some pictures for label ideas. I will most likely need to go with whatever we can afford, but it's still nice to keep in mind what looks good.






Saturday, January 30, 2010

Restaurant Partner

Great news! The restaurant partner I began discussions with a long time ago returned from China recently, and we have been working on the business for the past week. After he committed to a 9-month pilot, we have been spending the last week going over the general business plan, and talking about menu design. We are shooting to begin testing some meals by sending them to friends to cook at the end of next week.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Food Critic and Branding

Food Critic
A great new contact was made today. I had an enlightening conversation with Robin, a food critic. She has offered her initial thoughts, agreed to test our product before we launch, and will introduce us to food writer contacts when the time comes. One great idea contributed by Robin is to pair meals with experiences. For example, we could have a fiery hot meal for an upbeat dinner party, neat and non-messy food for a business dinner, and sensual colors and exotic spices for a romantic meal.

Branding
Today was also my first meeting with a group of student designers, Eric, Jimmy, and Paul. We are moving forward with more alternative names and logo's. They had some great idea's and we plan to test out their ideas by using Ask500People, a free polling service. One of their ideas was to include "Sous chef" in the name. Since our company will essentially be acting as a sous chef, preparing ingredients for our customers to cook. I look forward to working with this design team!





Thursday, January 21, 2010

Developments

Text Color

Logo and Name Development
In the interest of moving forward with the core parts of the business needed to start the pilot program, I had settled on our current name and logo without much testing. I have been lucky enough to meet a group of student designers who are excited about helping with Yumbox. They are putting together a set of logos and names, and we will meet this weekend to discuss and test them.

IJ Clinic
Yumbox has been accepted as a client of the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship! The IJ Clinic provides pro-bono legal support for entrepreneurs. This is especially heartening since I was just talking to Sue from Edulender yesterday about ways to take care of legal issues. Part of the challenge of Yumbox is that it is a new concept, hence it is difficult to learn from the legal path taken by other businesses.

Packaging
I am shooting to do my first test of the product in it's packaging on February 2nd, so I am trying to get samples form manufacturers to test out before then. One manufacturer has been particularly responsive, and I am looking into two box types that might work. Pictures of them are below. I plan to get the boxes in white, and have 3 by 4 inch color Yumbox Logo's printed from Staples or Office Depot and placed onto the box.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Lincoln Park Concept Testing

I visited Lincoln Park today with Wheaten Mather and Eric Li, my advisor and graphic designer. We struck up conversations with friendly looking people on the streets. We had three goals, get a feel for Lincoln Park as a potential pilot program neighborhood, get feedback on our concept, and decide between two logo's and names.

We learned that our hypothesis is right- that LP Caucasian Yuppies are interested in Yumbox. We also learned more about their preferences. They want the
ingredients prepared, they worry about freshness, they are willing to pay in the $30-$60 range for a meal for 4, and they're okay with ordering online.

In comparing our two logo's we received mixed feedback. The two logo's are below. There was a fairly even split in preferences. The one on top was applauded for its simplicity, while the one on the bottom did a better job of conveying fun, ethnicity, cooking, and delivery. The path I plan to move forward with is to remain with the name Yumbox Meals, but simplify the logo to have less clutter. I would love to hear more comments!

Welcome

Welcome! I write for both my own crystallization of thoughts and as a way of communicating with everyone who is supporting me in this venture. I would be happy to hear from you with questions, suggestions, or just a quick "Keep it up!"