Monroe Chabrier
The Idea
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Saffron connects top chefs with local foodies by creating a mobile marketplace to buy and sell homemade food.
Users can go on the Saffron app to browse chefs who are cooking meals currently or will be soon and order their meals. On the flipside chefs are able to upload a new dish, post what times it will be available, view when orders need to be ready, process payments, and track results.
Food Cottage Laws (food businesses out of your home) are evolving in every state which is creating a new market for great chefs to start their own food businesses without the huge upfront costs of opening a restaurant.
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There are many growing trends that led us to build Saffron, the most impactful ones being a huge growth in on-demand food, mobile ordering, healthy & sustainable food options, and unique food experiences.
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The Class
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We built Saffron as our Senior Project in a new class at Cal Poly called the Entrepreneurship Interdisciplinary Sr. Project. Top students from every major were chosen to be a part of the experimental program. The class attempts to create a cirriculum structure for building a startup.
Students pitch their ideas and are grouped up based on interests. Teams chose their own leaders and were responsible for recruiting the skills needed to build their ideas. The class was broken up into 5 sprints with an increasing complexity level of MVPs. A huge focus of the class was talking to customers and validating every idea/feature.
The class acts as an incubator to prepare teams for Cal Poly's few startup funding competitions: Startup weekend, Pitch Perfect, Innovation Quest, and the Accelerator program. Saffron placed 1st, 7th, 4th, and 2nd runner-up respectively. We won $1500 in scholarships and funding, and we were 1 vote away from $5000 in the biggest competition, Innovation Quest. We we're highlighted in Cal Poly's Green and Gold Alumni showcase (a showcase for alumni donors showing off 10-15 top projects) and the Cal Poly Magazine.
My role
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Saffron started as a complete 180 idea pivot from an education app, Capiche, that I was leading with a partner. We as a team decided we didn't want to work with that partner anymore and brainstormed new ideas finally ending with an idea, selling leftovers, that we slowly pivoted into Saffron.
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I continued to lead the team with our head developer in charge of technical decisions. The team started the class with 4 members (1 other business student and 2 engineers) and grew to 7 adding 2 new developers and 1 chef. My role was very broad as our team had very limited experience. I was in charge of graphic design, UX design, social media, marketing, customer development, recruiting, all class assignments, pitching/presentations, finances, competition applications, copy writing, event planning, chef outreach, as well as being a project manager for all technical sprints. Essentially everything that wasn't coding, I took on.
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One of our biggest accomplishments was our final event called SLO Foodie Fest. We planned the event to test our final MVP and get the word out about our business. We had 10 sponsors, 4 chefs making a total 12 dish options, 3 bands, 350 people in attendance, we brought in $3000 dollars in revenue, and processed 200 orders within our software.
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At the end, myself and the lead developer had great job opportunities and didn't have enough passion for food to continue our effort after the class concluded. We finished with a fully functional app, $500 in profits, and 400 followers.
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