It is no coincidence that Omari’s last name is McQueen. Omari was fast to start his journey as becoming an entrepreneur. Omari is the youngest award winning vegan chef in the UK and the founder and CEO of Dipalicious. Now, Omari at twelve years old, hosts his own YouTube Channel, published a cookbook, and is known as Britain’s Youngest chef. The most inspiring part of Omari’s story is the way he found a solution to a problem. Omari was taught how to cook at seven years old, the same time when his mother became ill. His father would often come home late from work, leaving Omari to do most of the cooking. Omari wanted to find ways to help his mother, so he began to research, which brought him to a vegan diet. After doing some research, he found a video on YouTube that inspired him, and the rest was history. Omari started with a YouTube video on vegan pizza that featured his homemade dip called “Caribbean Kick”. His dip became popular amongst his family and friends so he decided to go to a fair and sell his dips for fun. When his dips were sold out and happily consumed by costumers, Omari realized he wanted to start a business. Omari then launched his business, “Dipalicious”, the website for his business can be found here; Vegan Dips | Dipalicious.  Omari consistently makes YouTube videos for kids, which is a great idea because a lot of kids use YouTube as their connection to the online world. Usually whenever nutrition is talked about, it is known to be an adult conversation. Most people who are vegan are older, but Omari is challenging that normality. He is appealing to younger generations of people regarding nutrition. Omari is not stopping his innovation in the slightest. He wants to start a bus restaurant along with offering food on the good. Omari’s story and path to innovation is extremely noteworthy. He solved an issue at a young age, and made it into something great. Omari is a great example of a person who was not fazed by the social norm of today’s society. Omari is a tremendous inspiration to all!

Matt Maloney and Mike Evans were software developers in Chicago. They were working late again, ordering take out again, and tired of shuffling through old restaurant menus, calling, and reading their credit cards again. As software developers for Apartments.com, they were in the business of using software to simplify common, everyday problems like this one. So the moment of Eureka came.

While seemingly unrelated, Maloney tied realized the similarities between their current project (geographic lookup searches for rental real estate) and a database of local restaurants and their menus. They thought that restaurants would be willing to pay for a subscription to being featured on the website, but because the internet had been an underutilized and expensive tool thus far in the restaurant industry, managers were not interested. When Maloney and Evans instead offered to simply take a percentage commission of sales, business started moving.

Maloney and Evans realized this was a scalable operation, and their next agenda was to expand into a second city. Because they weren’t locals to a different city, breaking into that market probed more difficult. They wanted to provide a local-feeling service without paying rent in every city. Eventually, they determined that having a manager in their top cities and a team in Chicago.

The next challenge was steep competition. Seamless was finding great success in doing almost the exact thing that Grubhub was trying to do, and in some areas they were better. Maloney and Evans were of the belief that they needed to either beat them or join them; so the merged. They chose to keep both brands in their respective cities so as to save money on rebranding since both had a following in different cities.

Finally, keeping order wait times to under an hour poses difficulty because there is very little room for margin. Today, if an order isn’t confirmed quickly or out the door soon enough, someone from the Chicago sales team is calling the restaurant to confirm the order. The process and application for delivery drivers is also under constant refinement.

Every part of this service needs to work correctly for Grubhub/Seamless to be able to deliver on their purpose, so constant reiterations are innate to this company. Customer services, market responsiveness, and consistency are the lifeblood of this entrepreneurial endeavor.

Everyone loves a good sweet treat. But nobody likes cavities. Candy is a big culprit for causing tooth decay, due to high sugar content. Fourteen-year-old Alina Morse saw an opportunity: candy that is “tooth friendly”. Alina founded Zollipops, a company that sells sugar free candy, mainly lollipops. Alina got the idea when her father warned her that candy will “rot her teeth”. She researched for two years, testing many candy prototypes. She finally invested $3750 and started the company, when she perfected a recipe using xylitol and erythritol, natural sweeteners that reduce plaque. Her father also contributed $3750. Her product was an instant success, selling 70,000 units in one year. By 2018, sales had reached $6 million.

Alina is a unique child because she easily sees problems and thinks of solutions to the problems. The big problem she saw was the absence in the market for candy that is safe for teeth. Alina was driven by her desire to have sweets. She could not stand the thought of going without candy, simply because it was bad for her teeth. Her ability to see problems is an entrepreneurial trait

Alina became the entrepreneur she is today at a young age, through her parents’ encouragement. She is certainly a unique child. While most other children were reading story books or watching television while they were young kids, Alina was reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Her parents bought her the book in hopes of raising a child that had ambitions and a creative spirit. It was a clear success. Alina credits the book with giving her the ability and mindset to build a company with a vision.

A lot can be learned from Alina’s story. It is inspiring to see that something as simple as candy can make such a difference, have an impact, and be so easy to inspire creativity. Alina took a lollipop and transformed the industry to include a niche- dental conscious candy lovers. Some key points to learn is to not get caught up on thinking too big and to not be afraid to try something new. Put in the hard work and determination, even if it takes months or years of trials and testing. An entrepreneur does not give up.

https://moneyweek.com/economy/entrepreneurs/600654/alina-morse-the-teenager-who-made-a-million

U.S. grocery stores lose $18 billion in spoiled food each year.  This is about 8% of fresh food and 8 million tons that ends up in landfills.  After years of observing this inefficiency from the inside, Matt Schwartz teamed up with two of his friends from grad school at Stanford, Nathan Fenner and Volodymyr Kuleshov, to solve this problem in 2016.  These three entrepreneurs spent thousands of hours observing grocery store managers to learn how to build a tool that could be easily integrated into the process.  They use AI to predict how much produce grocery stores should order by analyzing many factors such as customer preference for certain varieties of produce at different times of the year and the effect of weather on areas where produce is growing.  The data engine automates as much as possible, but it also has an interface to easily interact with store associates when necessary.  The AI is also self-monitoring in order to maximize the effectiveness of the tool.

Fresh food is difficult to maintain in proper quantity because of its short life span, but Afresh is helping grocery stores have the right amounts of fresh produce at the right times to minimize waste and have the products that customers want available.  Afresh is a major innovation in an area that had been stagnant for a long time.  As a result, several large grocery stores have expressed in the company, and it has raised $7.8 million in investments.  Many of the stores participating in the development have seen their waste cut in half.  Afresh is now being used by Fresh Thyme, WinCo Foods, and Heinen’s Grocery Store.  Each store pays several thousand dollars per year for Afresh, but still increasing their profits because they have the right amount of fresh produce in the store.