Using Learning Launch to increase the Revenue of our Catering Service

Challenge

We run a small entrepreneurial catering service. Typically, a Customer will call us requesting us to  bring them food for a party they are having. They will tell us the number of guests they expect and  the menu. We prepare the food and deliver it together with the cutlery (plates, spoons, chaffing  dishes). The business had stagnated and we needed to increase revenue by increasing the range of  services that we were offering. To do this, we started asking by existing customers what we could do  that would truly make their lives better.

Selection

The responses we got from our customers showed that they wished they could hire our cutlery for  their functions, even when we did not provide the food. Some customers preferred to prepare their  own meals during their parties but lacked enough cutlery to cater for a large number of guests. We  decided to conduct a learning launch which broadly speaking is a fast and cheap experiment to test  the viability of a cutlery hire service.

Application

We advertised the cutlery hire service on our website as well as making flyers in soft-copy that we  shared on social media networks. We offered free drop off and pick up of the cutlery for the first  fifty customers. We got enthusiastic responses for the hire of cups, tea urns and side plates and  lackluster responses for the hire of dinner plates, forks and knives.

Insight

The responses we received showed that customers typically preferred hiring cutlery for tea parties  where preparation of tea and snacks was straight forward and customers could manage to do it  themselves. However, preparation of food for many guests was more involving and customers  preferred to fully outsource it (that is, preferred that we bring in the food in addition to the cutlery).

Approach

The other design tool that our company employed is the ethnographic interview. We made a close  observation of what customers were trying to accomplish in order to discover their unarticulated  needs. Doing so is what revealed the cutlery hire need. Somebody needed it, we could deliver it, and  doing so had the potential to help us meet our financial objectives. We had the “wow” zone referred  to by Cindy Luke in the lecture videos and quickly moved to conduct a fast and cheap  experiment (learning launch) to test the viability of that idea.

Conclusion

Our learning launch showed that hiring of cutlery for tea parties was viable and we added it to the  repertoire of services that our company offers. If we get a customer who needs to hire cutlery for  lunch and dinner parties we hire to them too, although most of such customers request that we  provide the food as well.

