The phrase ‘elevator pitch’ originates from a hypothetical scenario where you find yourself alone in an elevator with a wealthy potential investor. Think Bill Gates from Microsoft or Melanie Perkins from Canva. In the hypothetical, you have as much time as it takes an elevator to travel (imagine it’s a slow, older model!) to the top of the building to try and convince that person to invest in your idea. Or at least become very curious to learn more. Now imagine writing that pitch in 200 words or less – that’s what we are asking at the first question for the Ideas Challenge.
You might consider including an outline of the problem that you’re looking to solve, how you’re looking to solve it, and the customers that you’re looking to help with your solution. If you can tell us a little bit about how you and your team are personally connected to the problem and why it matters to you, that’s even better!
Don’t forget that every great elevator pitch ends with some kind of ‘call to action’ or ‘ask’ – that’s a great opportunity for you to tell us about the vision you have for your idea and how you think that participating in the Challenge might be valuable.
According to research, more than one-third of the food students eat at school is unhealthy, (such as sweet and savoury biscuits, sugary muesli bars and chips), with most lunchboxes not having any vegetables. We also know 15% of children arrive at schools without lunch, and as kids, we know how much this can detract from our learning in class. This is not just a question of children going hungry or eating too many meat pies, students having access to nutritious food supports overall health, growth, concentration, brain development and academic achievement. The social canteen is an initiative that connects schools with local cafes, restaurants and bakeries, where, in exchange for advertising and promotion, businesses can offer up foodstuffs that might go to waste for low cost meals that can be sold at the school canteen.
Feasibility is just a fancy way of checking to see if your solution is practical and grounded in reality. What we are looking for here are some thoughts about how, given enough time and resources, you might be able to build your solution in real life. The best way to go about answering this question is to think about the kinds of resources that you might need (the ability to code, someone to help you build a physical product or any expert information you might find valuable for example), as well as the resources that you already have (experience, connections or an understanding of the market). Remember, it’s ok to admit that launching an idea might present challenges – we’re all about accepting reality – the Ideas Challenge may help you in finding novel ways to overcome those challenges!
At the moment, the social canteen is in the ideas stage, but we have a rough outline of a process that we think will work for schools, canteens, businesses and students. We anticipate using a web platform where businesses can register their interest in becoming a provider and we would promote the opportunity by calling schools and setting up meetings with them and their canteen staff. We would anticipate needing some advice around the best way to set up the platform and some coding assistance to create a prototype. For the moment, meetings between businesses, schools and canteens could be arranged with dedicated efforts from our team rather than through a platform.
Desirability is all about understanding your customers; put another way, ‘What is driving people to really want your solution’. When you’re approaching this question, try to imagine the different types of people that might pay for, and use, the solution that you’re looking to build (even breaking them down into specific groups can be helpful for this process), and think about what is motivating them. This is a great opportunity for you to point out some unique insights that you might have into the problem that you’re looking to solve, or even potentially point towards similar existing solutions to yours and how you think you could emulate and replicate their success!
We know that parents would love any assistance in making the ‘getting ready for school’ process easier for themselves and their kids, and school lunches are a big hassle for many families. Aside from the time saved, we think that families would also be happy to know that their child is going to have a better learning experience (whilst eating tasty, local food!) We also believe that businesses around the local areas of schools would see clear value in advertising directly to local students and their families.
Ultimately, even the best ideas are going to be short-lived if they aren’t viable, meaning you and your team will likely need to get paid for the work that you do! Whilst we don’t anticipate any money changing hands during the Ideas Challenge, it’s important for our teams to consider the fundamental question of ‘How does my solution make money?’ during their planning process. Some good details to include when answering this question might be whether you could use a subscription model to sell your Idea, whether you have multiple ways to make money through your Idea or even some suggestions of what price that you think your customers are willing to pay. One thing to remember here is that, as you flesh out your Idea during the Challenge, it’s entirely possible that you might change your initial assumptions around viability – just give us your best guess for now!
Right now, we are anticipating that we will be able to take a small percentage (5 to 10 percent) of each meal sold by the canteens through the initiative. We would use our fees to continue the smooth operation of the model so that our staff can be paid to approach businesses and schools to bring them on-board, but will look for other ways to generate revenue into the future, potentially via additional advertising opportunities within schools or pop-up spaces for new products that businesses want to test on students.
Generating a sense that you are ‘going somewhere’ with your Idea is one of the best outcomes for the Challenge – this is what traction is all about. Getting out into the real world and testing your theories by chatting to/surveying potential customers, sketching out designs or building basic websites are great examples of early-stage traction that you can include in your application. It’s also completely understandable if you haven’t taken too many steps forward at this point – you might still be in the planning stage – if that is the case, feel free to use the traction section to tell us about some of the next steps that you plan to take, work you intend to do or conversations you intend to have.
Remember: if and when you get to having real-world conversations with strangers or launching anything into the world (like a website), your Supporters (including parents/guardians and teachers) should be kept informed of all your plans!
We’ve started initial conversations about the Social Canteen with schools in our local area, as well as the school that we currently attend. We’ve also generated a list of local hospitality businesses that we think might be suitable for providing food for the pilot program. Our next steps are to get written letters of intent from 5 schools and businesses, then we will look to launch for a Term and survey students to see what their impressions were. If successful we will broaden the scope of the idea by launching our website and taking the Social Canteen to new locations.
Go ahead and fill out our form here by 8pm on Friday of Week 4.