Exit Interview
(1) What is your essential
question and answers? What is your best answer and why?
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My first answer is cake decorators should be original
and creative to make profit in this economy.
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My second answer is cake decorators should determine
what drives customer demand.
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My third answer is cake decorators should incorporate
gluten free products to address the needs of many customers.
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My best answer is cake decorators should incorporate
gluten free products to address all customers’ needs because in today’s economy
you not only have to differentiate yourself from the markets competitors, but
also fit what the customers want. The reason why My first answer Cake decorators should be
original and creative to make profit as a cake decorator is not my best answer
is because it only showed at most 10%
bump in their business according to an article published by On top visibility Web Design & Marketing titled “ Myths about creativity”,
creativity derives from expertise , meaning that extraneous expertise can
hinder the creative flow , although someone may never get 100% original ideas
because it has seemingly become impossible to do. The reason why my second answer stating that cake decorators should determine
what drives customer demand is not my best answer is because although finding
out what customers want is essential, as a cake decorator you must not only
research on what customers want but also
incorporate what your customers want into your products. Customers determine
what products you will sell, so that there is neither a surplus nor shortage of
your product. Lastly, one should incorporate gluten-free products so that all
customers’ needs are met. The main goal for gluten free products used to be for
Celiacs that had to follow a special diet. A growing number of people are going
gluten-free by choice rather than medical necessity. This market will continue to expand and is
anticipated to grow at 25% and produced $4.2 billion dollars in 2013 according
to Market research company Packaged Facts. The reason for this market is to
offer products that generally most bakeries do not offer and it allows the
business to prosper. Essentially
incorporating gluten-free products is my best answer because it has been proven
to show more potential in making profit in this economy.
2) What process did you take to arrive at
this answer?
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The process I took to find my best answer involved
finding my first and second answers. I found my first answer while reading a
book that was meant for background on my senior topic titled Professional Cake Decorating
by Garret Toba, it was a college textbook that included everything there is to
know about cake decorating. What really hit me at first, was that it was
constantly repeating that you needed to be creative to have a presentable cake
and that it also had to be original.
Then I had my second interview with Jorge Renteria and he then confirmed
that in fact to make profit in his business his cake decorators needed to make
their products creative and original. His main point was that cakes that were
creative were targeted towards kids and they made the most profit on those
products. After my second interview with Mr. Renteria I found that since La
Puente Bakery #1 & #2 had a target market that was efficient, I started to
look in on how to find a target market fit for your business and I came across
an article by Alina Dizik titled 10 Questions to Ask before Determining Your
Target Market. One of the questions that caught my eye was Who would pay for my product or service?, because
it allowed me to look into that more and that meant looking for what drives
customer to buy a product. At that time in Purther’s class we were learning
about the concept of supply and demand and that is how I got to my second
answer. My last answer came from thinking of ways to differentiate a business
and I jotted down a list that included making custom cakes available to
customers, Fondant cakes, Gluten Free, Vegan/ vegetarian. And later I realized that gluten free
products aren’t widely available a lot and I know because I was diagnosed with
wheat allergy and I had still not found one gluten free bakery around La
Puente. So I started to look into the
whole gluten free market and I found that not only was this product being
purchased by people like me but also people who just want to be healthy, according
to The NPD Research group one third of consumers were people who wanted to be
healthy, maintain their weight, and just by choice rather than as a medical
necessity. The University of Chicago’s Celiac Disease
Center estimates that more than 3 million Americans — about one in 133 — have
celiac disease meaning that the market isn’t driven by
Celiacs. I later came across an article by Elaine Watson titled What’s the size
of the Gluten Free Prize and it talked about the many researching companies
that estimated what it is worth and they later found that Euro monitor Research
group was the most accurate and pricing the market at $ 486.5 million and
$285.1 million was from bakeries in 2013.
This is when I came into a conclusion that in fact incorporating gluten
free products to address all customers’ needs is my best answer because it is
25% more expensive according to Packaged Facts and to make Gluten Free products
is actually cheaper than the non-gluten free products because the products are
made of rice. The market for these products is also fairly large and it is
estimated to grow more. It also it kind of like a more specific thing a cake
decorator should do to raise profits in their business.
(3) What problems did you face? How
did you resolve them?
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A problem that I faced was during first semester was
trying to find research. What I did to resolve this problem was go to the
library and search for books about successful cake decorators and I came across
a book written by Buddy Valastro titled Cake Boss and from that I remembered
another famous cake Decorator Duff Goldman from Ace of Cakes and from those two
books and looked into what steps they took to make their businesses so
successful.
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Another problem that I faced was that for my second
presentation I had a lot of research and information to talk about and it could
possibly go over the 30 minute time limit. What I did was try and condense my
information by focusing on the quality research , so I looked through my
PowerPoint and looked at the things I could go without saying and I decided to exclude mentioning some of the prior experience I had
before doing my senior project.
(4) What are the two most
significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?
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One of my most significant sources was Professional
Cake decorating by Garret Toba a book that I had mentioned early which helped
me get my first answer and it also helped me fix my essential question into
focusing it on a business perspective rather than solely on the specific skills
and techniques. It also helped me out
with my independent component 1 with my mentor Ismael Cervantes in which I did
extra mentorship hours and what I did was compare the products that were
original and creative to the regular ones and I calculated the differences in
profits amongst the 2 categories. Throughout the independent component I kept
on referencing to the sections were it taught you different unique piping
techniques that I could use.
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.Another significant source was my mentor Ismael
Cervantes because he has a lot of knowledge in the field because he has worked
as a cake decorator for over 32 years because he began to work in the field at
age 14. He helped me out with any questions that I had with my senior project
and whenever I would find research on my answers I would first confirm if it in
fact applied to the industry before I would identify it as support for my
answers.
