*I was absent on the week of March 11, so my responses are based on the week after.
What progress has your team made so far? Have any new ideas, questions or challenges arisen from this work?
So far, our team has finished with the financial modeling, nutrition research, and a survey. While the financial modeling part was straighforward, I faced challenges with the consumer survey. Initially, our team and I planned to distribute the survey to better understand our consumers’ preferences of Tangyuan flavors and specific components of our product. Specifically, we wanted to determine their favorite Tangyuan filling and preferred kind of cooking method. However, after we distributed our survey, some our our participants refused to participate–they told us their ratings would be invalid as they have not yet tasted them before. Mr. Landrum told us the same thing. He advised us to make the purpose of our survey tailored to our needs in order for our product to be successful. So, our group had to investigate people’s perception about Tangyuan and S’mores, and preferences on aspects of our product, such as texture, addition of chocolate, and price. Looking back, I am so grateful that we could correct a limitation in our previous survey to better suit our needs.
What progress have you and your group made on collecting data? How was it collected? How has that supported your design choices?
Initially, the survey was to be collected by 40 students and 10 teachers. However, after distributing a new survey, we received responses from 13 students and 2 teachers. It was collected by distributing a printed copy of the questionaire to every student and teacher in the Food Science class, and two students outside the classroom. The participants were asked to not write their names and given around 5 minutes to complete it. Then, each paper was anonymously collected. If we had more time, we would have made our final product based on the survey responses and conducted taste tests.
Conclusions fron the survey:
- Taste is the most important component in a food product in our food science class, followed by nutrition.
- A large majority of students in our class like tangyuan slightly to very much.
- 2/3 of students in our class likes black sesame.
- Most of the students responded that they would “maybe” eat Tangyuan S’mores.
- 78% of students have eaten S’mores before.
- Soft and chewy, and crispy texture are most important to our consumers.
- 86% of students prefer s’mores with chocolate.
- Mean price with 50rmb outlier: 9.57 RMB
- Mean price without 50rmb outlier: 6 RMB.
Our final product is fried Black sesame flavored Tangyuan with a drizzle of chocolate. Black sesame was, by majoirty, the most popular flavor among the students. In addition, by frying the tangyuna, we will ensure that the texture of our product is both soft and chewy, and crispy. Although students desire the addition of chocolate, when my team produced and ate it, chocolate overpowered the sweetness of the Tangyuan. Nevertheless, to please our customers, we decided to just put a drizzle of chocolate.
Have you worked on visual or financial modelling? If so, provide some insight into those processes.
We worked on the financial modelling. First, we found the amount of ingredients needed to make 1 s’more. Then, we found the amount each ingredient contained and its unit cost. For example, the package of graham crackers we used had 250g, and it was 20RMB. Afterwards, we divded the unit amount contained in te package divided by the amount we needed for just one s’more. Dividing this value from the cost of the package gave us the cost per s’more. In total, the cost per s’more without chocolate was 0.95 RMB and cost per s’more with chocolate was 1.61 RMB. The optimal revenue price from the Cost of Good Sold (COGS) for the food industry is around 35%, in which our production cost is 1.61 RMB. Thus, the optimal sales price derived would be around 2RMB. However, this price only covvers material costs, not reflecting labor and marketing costs. Therefore, we decided to increase the price of our product to 6RMB, a value agreed upon by our survey participants.