The Tale of a Donut Start-Up
Nicholas Gucciardi
Sheridan College
The Start
It all started with sweets and a certain individual, this individual is a man named Leo he goes to Sheridan College and has large cravings for sweets and junk food. After numerous interviews with this fellow student, we discovered there’s an entire world of creativity integrating with junk food. We discovered if people were given the ability to fully customize their food options there would be more of a connection from the person to the item. Thus, they began the company of donuts that started their venture in customizing people’s favorite snacks or treats Donut Costume.
Background on Strategy
Why did Donut Costume go for this marketing strategy? Let me explain, it all comes down to the human phycology we all know that humans strive to better themselves and have an insane list for wants and rewards, but people also like the sense of being on top of all decisions and being in control of circumstances. According to a study from the University of Texas, what triggers these thoughts in our brain to want everything personalized to our specs is the desire for control and information overload. With Donut Costume the desire for control is our key marketing tool and is what we offer for our main product which is our donuts, we want to create a sense of illusion to our consumers that they’re in control and to our brains that creates a positive feeling for us internally. Now going onto the second factor which is information overload, giving the option for people to fully customize their donuts and flavors eases the factor of information overload meaning people don’t have to worry if employees mess up their donuts or must worry about any wrongful scenario.
Business Model
The Donut Costume is a 90 percent computerized company, meaning the only person that works in the shop is the person at the front desk for customers who want to pay in cash or cryptocurrency, and yes the Donut Costume accepts cryptocurrency as this was the mainstream topic for months when Bitcoin blew up. The reasoning for everything to be computerized is that we think it makes it easier for customers to customize and make there own donut as young adults and teenagers use digital products more frequently than talking to a person. The Donut Costume offers 64 different flavors of icing such as chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and many more, they also offer 24 different toppings on these donuts such as fruits, chocolate chips and other brand name chocolates such as Oh Henry! The donuts are manufactured on the spot by an automated machine, not only can this machine create donuts in large volume but can also do artistic designs! You can upload images onto our devices to paste it on our creative donuts!
Social Output
Donut Costume is also making an app to order online so people can get their donuts in advance! This app will not only support people’s orders but will be used as a social media platform for the company. People can post and share on this app their brand-new donut inventions to spread awareness of what is tasteful and what is not tasteful. The users that post donuts and get the most popularity will earn points and promotional discounts. For example, if Timmy’s donut earns 1000 likes on any social media platforms Timmy will receive one donut free or a discount on in-store purchases. With this strategy, this gives Donut Costume a decent marketing platform and encourages customers to spread the word about this creative and innovative company! Donut Costume is one of a kind company with expanding the idea, this company sets sail to also expand its product lines such as cookies, cupcakes, and many more!