Doughversity Could Improve The Modern Cookie
I had impatiently dreamed of this day for months. More than four hundred cookies of almost twenty different varieties tempted me from every corner of the room. The treats were ripe for the picking. There were gingerbread men and sugar cookies and chocolate reindeer with pretzel antlers. By the end of the night, at least one of every type would be mine.
Every Christmas, the staff at my elementary school had a cookie exchange. Every staff member would bake a batch of their favorite variety of cookie. Then the cookies would be divided up. Each baker would get one of everyone else’s type of cookie, leaving them with upwards of twenty unique, homemade cookies. Fortunately for me, my mother was a teacher. Every year we would trade a batch of our favorite cookies for a multitude of completely different and equally delicious cookies.
One year, my mother no longer taught at that school, and we mourned the loss of our special cookie plate. There is something remarkable about never knowing what the next cookie will taste like. I knew that there must be another way to get my cookie fix.
In the United States, cookies are a significant part of our diet. “Americans consume over 2 billion cookies a year … about 300 cookies for each.” Not only are people eating an average of almost one cookie per day, but “95.2% of U.S. households consume cookies” (source: southfloridareporter.com). Americans love their cookies, but what if they could enjoy them so much more?
Americans need a source of variety in their cookie diet akin to that of the community cookie exchange.
My solution to this is an online market where cookies are sold individually by the dozen. That means each cookie you buy would be different. To increase cookie variety and flavor, all of our cookies would be sourced from locally owned bakeries. The cookies would then be delivered to your door by mail.
Before we start baking and building we need to analyze the market and the competition. Will this product have a chance to be successful in the current state of our market? What are the current political, economic, social, and technological factors that could effect the success of this enterprise? How do other cookie sellers compare to our model?
Political and Social Influence on cookies
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way our society is allowed to engage with one another. Because of new laws against gatherings greater than only a few persons. Many large gatherings that people would have purchased deserts for are no longer happening. This could be detrimental to the business’ success.
In California, all nonessential, nonreligious gatherings are banned. (source: CA Gov’t Stay at Home Guidelines)
On the other hand, people who participate in yearly cookie exchanges will have to find an alternative way to get their cookies when these events are cancelled. This could increase the amount of people purchasing cookies online.
The standing of cookies in our Economy
“…nearly 110,000 small businesses across the country had decided to shut down permanently between early March and early May” (source: NY Times Small Business Owners are Giving Up)
Because of covid, bakeries and small businesses have lost a portion of their business and are struggling to stay above water. Because of this, many locations are more open to using alternative methods of sale other than the traditional method of purchasing at a physical location. Bakeries might be more likely to allow us sell their cookies on our website.
Technology and cookies
“Orders placed via smartphone and mobile apps will become a $38 billion industry by 2020.” (source: upserve ordering statistics)
2020 has seen stay at home orders, riots, and more that have caused people to stay inside and away from people as much as they can. As a result, more and more people are ordering their food online and having it delivered than ever before.
This graph shows the sales volume of online food orders from March and April of 2020. The world has gone through rapid change and food delivery is no longer something people take advantage of only when they’re busy. Ordering food online is being pushed into the modern era by companies like GrubHub and DoorDash. This shift in consumer behavior will benefit our business venture.
Competitive Landscape
How does our idea compare to existing businesses?
I visited and compared 8 different mail order cookie retailers online, and I charted their average cookie price and flavor variety. The majority of the shops that I visited offered bulk plates of three or four types of themed cookies for large events instead of family size plates with greater variety.
Only 2 of the 8 stores allowed small custom orders. Of those two stores, one had only 10 cookie flavors to choose from, and the other had 15. Many of the cookie stores had a large lack of variety, offering only about 5 different cookie flavors.
There is not enough variety in the mail order cookie business. Our aim is to fill the gap in the market in the top right of the graph. Our business would offer a much higher variety of flavors at a premium.
Ask The User
The next step in our process to investigate the viability of the product is to conduct interviews with users. We want to uncover unknown information regarding our solution and how consumers might feel about it.
“Supposing is good, but finding out is better.” — Mark Twain
No matter how sure you are that your idea is awesome, the success of a product is only as great as the sum of its users. Talking to people about our product is an important way to uncover previously unknown feelings and ideas from our users.
How to Ask
Designing good questions can be difficult. Good interview questions are open ended, designed to remove confirmation bias, avoid leading questions, and reveal unknown knowns.
Here are a few examples of questions that I used in my interviews:
- What is your favorite type of cookie?
- How do you eat your cookies?
- If you had a dozen cookies in your house right now how long would they last.
- What is your experience with ordering cookies online?
- How often do you eat cookies?
- How do you feel about cookie variety?
- What are your thoughts on purchasing deserts made at local bakeries?
My questions are designed to be as open and broad as possible to avoid any bias while still getting relevant information.
An example of a biased question is:
- Do you prefer the higher quality, better tasting desserts made at local bakeries?
This question is biased. It can be answered with a yes or no and leads the user to a certain conclusion. By stating in the question that the desserts made at a bakery are higher quality and better tasting you lead the user to agreeing instead of answering with how they really feel.
Notice how my questions are written to make it impossible to answer with a simple yes or no. Allowing users to fully form their answers gives you access to how the user thinks. This will increase the quantity of useful information you get from each interview and reduce possible bias.
The User’s Insights
“I love it and I would definitely do it.”
I interviewed six cookie lovers from three different age ranges to get a sense of how our product might perform. I interviewed three college students and three working adults.
Out of the six people I interviewed four of them said that their favorite cookie was a traditional chocolate chip cookie.
Everyone who I interviewed said that they liked the variety of cookies that existed, and were pro variety with more being better.
Only one of the people I interviewed had ever ordered cookies online through the mail. One person said that they didn’t know that ordering cookies online was an option, and others said it never occurred to them to do so.
“I would have to have an option to opt out of it for a month.”
I received a large amount of interesting feedback when asking possible users if they would pay for my solution. One person I interviewed suggested that instead of focusing entirely on an online store that the service should be subscription based. Another user agreed, but said that the subscription service should have a store component to it also. This would allow users to try 12 cookies from different local bakeries each month, and if users liked what they got then they could order more of a specific type of cookie from their previous months box. Another person said that they would like to be able to pause the service and enable it when they needed it for social events or holiday parties.
All of this important feedback would not have been revealed without talking with the possible future users of my product. User interviews are a crucial step in developing a successful product.
The Improved Idea
Our improved idea combines feedback from our interviews and our market research. The service will primarily offer a subscription based service that sells cookies purchased from multiple bakeries and ships them to the user’s door. As an additional service we will offer an online platform where bakers can sell their cookies and where users can purchase more of the cookies that they received in their subscription box. Our service will help bakers sell their cookies and connect users with cookies from local bakeries.
What’s Next?
We analyzed the idea in the context of the current market, talked to possible users about our idea, and used this information to design an improved idea. We can now begin designing our application.
User Journeys
User journeys represent a flow of a user’s interaction with our service and help us visualize and plan what our service will offer.
Here are some user journeys for the product.
- John the user is frustrated with the lack of cookie variety at his grocery store so he visits doughversity.com and subscribes to receive cookies every month. He chooses a plan that fits his needs, and he enters his payment information. He then browses what other bakeries are selling on the website while he waits for his next month of cookies.
- Bill the baker is struggling to keep his bakery afloat after losing much of his business because of the pandemic. Bill visits doughversity.com and creates a baker account. He creates a profile with information about his bakery and adds a few items to his store profile. He then adds his payment information to receive payments from shoppers on doughversity.
Wire Frames
Wire frames are diagrams that plan out what each page of a website will look like. To design these wireframes I visited other websites that offer a similar service and I looked at what components and design elements were common across all of those websites. I then combined those together with some of my own ideas to make wireframes for four different pages of our website.
Stay in touch!
If you’re excited about the project or are totally sold on our product you can check out our prototype.
Here’s another plate of cookies as a reward for making it through the entire post. :)
