Anna Kaplan
Challah Bread Everywhere
The Challenge
In today’s world we rely on ease of access. From paying bills to accessing information people want fast and simple. For college aged students this reliance is amplified.
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Challah for Hunger’s University of Maryland chapter went from selling out of their challah bread on a weekly basis to taking a weekly profit loss. The challenge presented was to discover how a consistent customer base can be maintained in a landscape that changes every 4 years.
The Approach
The first step in the process required assessing what was currently being done, and what had been done in previous years.
Research:
Previously, there had only been one sales location, the Maryland Hillel building.
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After seeing a steady decrease in sales over two years I knew that our current sales model was not attainable. Therefore, in exploring other potential customer segments I identified several populations:
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1. Jewish students who had a connection to challah, but never visited the Hillel building
2. Students who had never heard of challah, but would buy it based on look or the organizations mission
3. Visiting students who were touring campus
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This project took a limited research heads first approach as there was a very low risk assessment.
The Outcome
After establishing the segments, I also acknowledged that cutting the current location risked losing the current customer segment. Therefore, I took a two-prong approach and the organization spent one hour a week selling at the Hillel building, and one hour a week selling at our 'pop-up' location, which varied week-to-week.
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The Result
After implementing 'pop-up' sales the organization gained increased exposure and a 20% increase in sales. It was projected if not for COVID overall sales would have increased 40% .