With finals quickly approaching, even students are coming up with ingenious ideas that are sure to lighten the mood! Tom Burr, Madison Gallant, Nick Gigot, Mackenzie Morrow, and Ruth Young are Wake students who have spent a lot of time brainstorming ideas for their final entrepreneurship class project before ultimately deciding to bring an ice cream truck to campus.
Mackenzie explains that they thought it would be an interesting way to sell a product that everyone loves. “We could all reminisce back to the days of being little kids who would drop everything at the sound of the ice cream truck.”
In order to bring the idea to life, the team conducted heavy research and a survey with over 200 respondents in order to gauge the student body’s interest (95% liked the idea!). This valuable information helped them to better understand their market and essential questions such as: which ice cream products to sell, what price to sell them at, and when to run the truck.
The project requires that the team spend no more than $100 on the venture, so they creatively “bootstrapped” resources including a truck with a PA system (for the classic ice cream jingle, of course!), coolers, Costco membership cards, and dry ice.
As the weather gets warmer, the team is optimistic that their venture will be successful. “There has never been an ice cream truck on campus before, which is why we think this venture has the potential to be particularly valuable,” comments Ruth.
Overall, the team is hoping not only for monetary success, but to also to bring something to campus that Wake students genuinely enjoy and get excited about. Mackenzie sums up the team’s perspective by saying, “Who knows, if it really is a hit, we might have to bring it back [next year]!”
The truck will officially arrive to campus on April 24th at 11 a.m. and will run until 5 p.m. on April 27th. So, make sure to spread the word of Mother Truckin’ Ice Cream and check out their Twitter and Facebook pages for more exciting info!