Week 8 Pitch + Meeting With Jason Notes
Pitch Script
[Slide 1] We’re The Feline Food Scoop and we’re revolutionising the current wasteful system of buying cat food.
1.6 million New Zealanders own at least one cat. If even a quarter of these cats are fed one single serve meal a day, this would send 146 million pieces of non-biodegradable waste to landfill each year! This is not sustainable.
There is a large eco-friendly trend in New Zealand, with people keen to cut down on their packaging waste. [Slide 2] We’ve spoken to a number of eco-conscious New Zealand cat owners and there is a clear issue of people wanting a more sustainable alternative to plastic or aluminium packaging.
Our proposal is to become a new distribution channel of frozen pellets of wet cat food from a sustainable pet food manufacturer, supplying it to local Bin Inns for resale in bulk freezer bins. Customers would bring their own reusable containers to fill from the bulk bin of frozen pellets, thus helping to combat the issue of pet food packaging waste and tying into the zero waste and buying local trends.
[Slide 3] We are interested in working with New Zealand pet food producer ‘K9 Natural' to distribute their line of frozen pellets of cat food using a new and eco-conscious system. K9 Natural’s recipes consist of 90% fresh meat, 5% egg and New Zealand Green Lipped mussels, and 5% essential vitamins and minerals. These natural ingredients are sourced from sustainably managed local free-range farms, which will appeal to our target audience - although they are currently sold in plastic packaging and aluminium cans.
We believe K9 Natural would be keen to work with us as this business venture would allow them to be seen as a forward thinking company who, by aligning with an environmentally friendly packaging initiative, would be taking the story of their sustainable product the full circle.
[Slide 4] As K9 Natural is located in Christchurch, we are proposing that our initial pilot would be through the three Bin Inn stores in Christchurch city. K9 Natural would provide a freezer in each of the three Bin Inns that would be owned and maintained by the company. These freezers would be branded with the branding of K9 Natural, plus they would also display the nutritional information of the frozen pet food.
Bin Inn would purchase the cat food off of K9 Natural and add their own markup. This way the stock becomes Bin Inn’s liability and K9 Natural do not loose out on profit if it is not getting shifted.
We have spoken to the owner of Bin Inn Petone, Allan Bennett, who is very interested in our concept and believes Bin Inns around the country would be eager to have a clean, odourless, easy system to supply wet cat food to customers as they can only currently stock dry kibble.
[Slide 5] Lastly we would need to align with a food distributor to save initial investment costs on freezer trucks and the ongoing costs of transport and labour. We are interested in working with Bidfood and becoming another specialised wholesaler who's product is delivered by them for a small percentage of the profit. The advantage of distributing through Bidfood is that the retailer can set up weekly or fortnightly pre-orders, but also has the safety net of being able to have stock delivered the same day of ordering.
To carry our eco-friendly story through every element of our process, we would also need to package the bulk lot of frozen pellets in large bio-degradable plastic bags for Bidfood to place in their own cardboard boxes for transport. These cardboard boxes are then reused over and over again by Bidfood for various different products.
The final cost would be the employment of a sales representative who would work for K9 Natural and liaise between the various different companies plus sign up new retailers.
[Slide 6] In summary, we are the service within a company that links the manufacturer, the distributor, and the retailers; facilitating and marketing the sale of more sustainable and eco-friendly cat food.
An insight we gained from conversations with our target customer - eco conscious cat owners - was that people prefer to buy single serve sachets or cans as their cats like fresh food and flavour variety. Our bring-your-own-container system puts the choice of how much to buy into the customers hands, while eliminating wasteful packaging.
122 thousand 580 people in Christchurch own at least one cat, therefore there is a large potential customer base.
[Slide 7] If proven to work through our Christchurch pilot, this concept will be able to be scaled throughout the 37 Bin Inn stores in New Zealand, with potential to expand to boutique or organic grocery stores. We would maintain our partnership with Bidfood as they distribute all over New Zealand. There is also the potential to expand into dog food using K9 Natural’s frozen dog food pellet range.
We are pitching for K9 Natural to take on our scheme and employ one of us as the sales representative for the pilot year. Our system has the potential to be scaled into a larger section of the company and therefore more employment opportunities.
[Slide 8] The new costs for K9 Natural will be: the purchase of freezers, freezer branding, and large bio-degradable plastic transport bags, and the salary of the sales representative.
The advantages of the proposed system for K9 Natural will be: saving money on wasteful and expensive packaging, profit from this new revenue stream, reaching new customers and diversifying their clientele.
[Slide 9] We still need to do further user testing and we need to get written expressions of interest from K9 Natural and the three proposed Bin Inns in Christchurch city as well as potential customers.
There’s a huge gap in the market for sustainably packaged wet pet food and we think this self-serve concept has great potential to appeal to the target customers and reduce a large waste stream.
The Feline Food Scoop, 'Delicious Taste - None Of The Waste' - revolutionising wasteful systems one cat's dinner at a time!
Pitch Slides
"Yeah Nah" - first thing said in feedback lol
Our issue is really pressing but they're not convinced about our solution. We have written ourselves out of the business - there's nothing for us to do. We need to have a more active role in this scheme and be more bold and ambitious. Make your own pet food!
Issue with BYO packaging - people are likely to forget their container and not be able to get pet food.
Team Discussion After Pitch
Make our own pet food. Work with a pet nutritionist to develop pet food. Frozen food that is still self serve? Back to deposit return jars? Still issue with remembering to bring packaging - delivery and pickup service perhaps. Full jars delivered fortnightly, old jars picked up, cleaned and reused. Would this be feasible? Why did the milkman stop delivering? Is the issue with the milkman how often it's delivered? Buying and delivering in bulk may be more feasible and cost efficient - deliver to an area on a certain day (i.e. Wellington Central on Friday, Lower Hutt on Thurs, etc.). The self-serve idea has the most potential to be easily scaled nationally.
Meeting With Jason
Is Bin Inn's market more bulk buy consumers rather than eco conscious consumers?? Common sense is more our market - we should be selling where the market is initially then work on expanding our market once we're established.
Can we reconsider biodegradable plastic as the lesser of two evils (bio/non-bio plastics).
For pricing/budget - ask what K9 Natural sell their food wholesale for and half it to get how much it would cost to make the food. Don't have to know the exact numbers but don't pull them out of nowhere. Do some research and make an educated estimate. You can ask for half a million dollars - that's not an issue for investors.
If making your own pet food so asking for a lot of money from investors to set up a manufacturing plant, you have to be able to show that you have a huge customer base and room for a heap of expansion so the there is clearly going to be a large profit and the investor will be getting a lot in return.
[Slide 1] We’re The Feline Food Scoop and we’re revolutionising the current wasteful system of buying cat food.
1.6 million New Zealanders own at least one cat. If even a quarter of these cats are fed one single serve meal a day, this would send 146 million pieces of non-biodegradable waste to landfill each year! This is not sustainable.
There is a large eco-friendly trend in New Zealand, with people keen to cut down on their packaging waste. [Slide 2] We’ve spoken to a number of eco-conscious New Zealand cat owners and there is a clear issue of people wanting a more sustainable alternative to plastic or aluminium packaging.
Our proposal is to become a new distribution channel of frozen pellets of wet cat food from a sustainable pet food manufacturer, supplying it to local Bin Inns for resale in bulk freezer bins. Customers would bring their own reusable containers to fill from the bulk bin of frozen pellets, thus helping to combat the issue of pet food packaging waste and tying into the zero waste and buying local trends.
[Slide 3] We are interested in working with New Zealand pet food producer ‘K9 Natural' to distribute their line of frozen pellets of cat food using a new and eco-conscious system. K9 Natural’s recipes consist of 90% fresh meat, 5% egg and New Zealand Green Lipped mussels, and 5% essential vitamins and minerals. These natural ingredients are sourced from sustainably managed local free-range farms, which will appeal to our target audience - although they are currently sold in plastic packaging and aluminium cans.
We believe K9 Natural would be keen to work with us as this business venture would allow them to be seen as a forward thinking company who, by aligning with an environmentally friendly packaging initiative, would be taking the story of their sustainable product the full circle.
[Slide 4] As K9 Natural is located in Christchurch, we are proposing that our initial pilot would be through the three Bin Inn stores in Christchurch city. K9 Natural would provide a freezer in each of the three Bin Inns that would be owned and maintained by the company. These freezers would be branded with the branding of K9 Natural, plus they would also display the nutritional information of the frozen pet food.
Bin Inn would purchase the cat food off of K9 Natural and add their own markup. This way the stock becomes Bin Inn’s liability and K9 Natural do not loose out on profit if it is not getting shifted.
We have spoken to the owner of Bin Inn Petone, Allan Bennett, who is very interested in our concept and believes Bin Inns around the country would be eager to have a clean, odourless, easy system to supply wet cat food to customers as they can only currently stock dry kibble.
[Slide 5] Lastly we would need to align with a food distributor to save initial investment costs on freezer trucks and the ongoing costs of transport and labour. We are interested in working with Bidfood and becoming another specialised wholesaler who's product is delivered by them for a small percentage of the profit. The advantage of distributing through Bidfood is that the retailer can set up weekly or fortnightly pre-orders, but also has the safety net of being able to have stock delivered the same day of ordering.
To carry our eco-friendly story through every element of our process, we would also need to package the bulk lot of frozen pellets in large bio-degradable plastic bags for Bidfood to place in their own cardboard boxes for transport. These cardboard boxes are then reused over and over again by Bidfood for various different products.
The final cost would be the employment of a sales representative who would work for K9 Natural and liaise between the various different companies plus sign up new retailers.
[Slide 6] In summary, we are the service within a company that links the manufacturer, the distributor, and the retailers; facilitating and marketing the sale of more sustainable and eco-friendly cat food.
An insight we gained from conversations with our target customer - eco conscious cat owners - was that people prefer to buy single serve sachets or cans as their cats like fresh food and flavour variety. Our bring-your-own-container system puts the choice of how much to buy into the customers hands, while eliminating wasteful packaging.
122 thousand 580 people in Christchurch own at least one cat, therefore there is a large potential customer base.
[Slide 7] If proven to work through our Christchurch pilot, this concept will be able to be scaled throughout the 37 Bin Inn stores in New Zealand, with potential to expand to boutique or organic grocery stores. We would maintain our partnership with Bidfood as they distribute all over New Zealand. There is also the potential to expand into dog food using K9 Natural’s frozen dog food pellet range.
We are pitching for K9 Natural to take on our scheme and employ one of us as the sales representative for the pilot year. Our system has the potential to be scaled into a larger section of the company and therefore more employment opportunities.
[Slide 8] The new costs for K9 Natural will be: the purchase of freezers, freezer branding, and large bio-degradable plastic transport bags, and the salary of the sales representative.
The advantages of the proposed system for K9 Natural will be: saving money on wasteful and expensive packaging, profit from this new revenue stream, reaching new customers and diversifying their clientele.
[Slide 9] We still need to do further user testing and we need to get written expressions of interest from K9 Natural and the three proposed Bin Inns in Christchurch city as well as potential customers.
There’s a huge gap in the market for sustainably packaged wet pet food and we think this self-serve concept has great potential to appeal to the target customers and reduce a large waste stream.
The Feline Food Scoop, 'Delicious Taste - None Of The Waste' - revolutionising wasteful systems one cat's dinner at a time!
Pitch Slides
Pitch Feedback
Our issue is really pressing but they're not convinced about our solution. We have written ourselves out of the business - there's nothing for us to do. We need to have a more active role in this scheme and be more bold and ambitious. Make your own pet food!
Issue with BYO packaging - people are likely to forget their container and not be able to get pet food.
Team Discussion After Pitch
Make our own pet food. Work with a pet nutritionist to develop pet food. Frozen food that is still self serve? Back to deposit return jars? Still issue with remembering to bring packaging - delivery and pickup service perhaps. Full jars delivered fortnightly, old jars picked up, cleaned and reused. Would this be feasible? Why did the milkman stop delivering? Is the issue with the milkman how often it's delivered? Buying and delivering in bulk may be more feasible and cost efficient - deliver to an area on a certain day (i.e. Wellington Central on Friday, Lower Hutt on Thurs, etc.). The self-serve idea has the most potential to be easily scaled nationally.
Meeting With Jason
Is Bin Inn's market more bulk buy consumers rather than eco conscious consumers?? Common sense is more our market - we should be selling where the market is initially then work on expanding our market once we're established.
Can we reconsider biodegradable plastic as the lesser of two evils (bio/non-bio plastics).
For pricing/budget - ask what K9 Natural sell their food wholesale for and half it to get how much it would cost to make the food. Don't have to know the exact numbers but don't pull them out of nowhere. Do some research and make an educated estimate. You can ask for half a million dollars - that's not an issue for investors.
If making your own pet food so asking for a lot of money from investors to set up a manufacturing plant, you have to be able to show that you have a huge customer base and room for a heap of expansion so the there is clearly going to be a large profit and the investor will be getting a lot in return.
