Assignment 20A
Expert in the industry: The industry in which my idea lies in is the groceries industry. My main idea is simply drive-thru grocery stores, so simply combining convenience into the normal grocery routine of individuals. The expert I initially planned to seek was anyone involved in this industry. However, I realized I wanted to make it a little more specific to Florida so I chose publix, and more specifically a publix manger. The Starbucks I work for is very close to a Publix, so I find myself attending that particular one more than the rest in Gainesville (on Newberry road). The managers of that Publix are almost always present during the day, greeting customers and asking them if they need assistance, so finding one to talk to was not very hard. I asked to speak to the store manager and was quickly introduced to him. He was very knowledgeable about the industry, and described the kind of learning he had to do about the market in order to operate a successful chain. When I introduced my idea, he initially giggled and told me it’d be a hard one to pull off. However, he did agree and say that the idea was definitely one to fix a lot issues pertaining to convenience. I asked him who i should speak to next and he suggested an expert on drive-thru management.
Expert on the market: I took these proceedings over to my own job, Starbucks. I chose to interview my store manager, who has been with the company for 9 years and has seen it go through numerous stages and changes. When I asked him what kind of customer he believed the Starbucks customer to be, he replied with “the busy adult who needs a quick way to caffeinate themselves.” I told him to expand a little more on the convenience side of Starbucks, and he expressed how over the years, Starbucks has changed to better appeal to the busy working man/woman. He says that busy mothers and working people find the most pleasure from the convenience, and Starbucks has transformed almost every Cafe-store into a drive-thru Starbucks because the company finds they’re better able to achieve a higher profit when also catering to the individual on the run. My store manager then advised that I speak to the district manager next, because he is best knowledgeable about the drive-thru market.
Important supplier to the industry: I took my store manager’s advice and decided to speak to our district manager as the expert in supplies. In my case, knowledge of convenience and drive-thru operations are extremely important to the service. My district manager comes once a week to my store to touch base with my store manager, so this is how I was able to catch a chat with him. Before proposing my idea to him, I asked about his knowledge about drive-thru technicalities and he provided very interesting information. He emphasized the importance of convenience and time efficiency, and how these two factors went hand in hand in drive-thru operations. He said that a successful drive thru meant that individuals would arrive and collect their goods in a matter of less than 3-5 minutes. For Starbucks, that is closer to 1-2 minutes. He emphasized how 30 second times are encouraged and how there are numerous techniques available for achieving this kind of time. He said that it is important to match the pace of the customer, and that sense of urgency was crucial to low drive times. I then introduced my idea of a drive-thru grocery store, and he posed that to make it a fast service would be something new to the fast service industry, because are a number of difficult factors to deal with-such as order amount, produce, and budget. I agreed with him and told him these were all things I considered when expanding this idea, however, I strongly believed in the possibility of it happening.
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