A Junk Food Alternative

Problem Statement

Over the years, junk foods form a heated debate on the health repercussions and sustainability of the dietary body needs. Junk food is used pejoratively to refer to foods which bear high levels of sugars and fat. Junk food disposes the human body to high amounts of calories which in excess and continuous consumption, might lead to health complications such as obesity (Datar $ Nicosia, 2012). Also, junk foods could comprise less fiber, vitamins, and minerals or can refer to foods with extra protein contents especially meat prepared from saturated fats. Contemporary, fasts foods outlets that provide varieties of hamburger, fried chicken and pizza are examples of foods considered as junk. However, as the description of the outlets indicates, production of junk food is fast compared to other regular foods. Also, students or the millennia's population, in general, are fond of these cosmetic foods and their fast services. Despite the escalated publicity of the health hazards attributed to junk foods, the reception is still alarming as more junk outlets businesses continue to flourish. Owing to this loophole, my brother and I have laid expansion plans to our espresso and juice business, to chip into healthy food provision to schools at amicable business deliberations with the board. Our business model aims at providing an alternative to the junk food menace to change the culture and the perceptions of the food and beverages industry. Moreover, our business model will adhere to the school's administration's financial concerns as well as address the collective distresses from parents and dietitians. 

Proposed Solutions

Our business aims at changing the norm or providing beverages with high sugar content to the school children. Our experience in espresso and healthy juices equips us with the knowledge about drinks that are beneficial to the students. Apart from the espresso services, the business will focus on availing juice bars around the school premises where we will integrate various types of fruit and vegetable juices. These beverages are purely blended with water, and they also have no supplements, fragrances, or storage additives. Alongside our juice bars, we will avail simple, healthy snacks such as apple slices and mixed berries and nuts to supplement the variety of choice the students can make. 

Also, our business model will focus on the student's health and dietetics. Therefore, we aim to introduce advisory services that will accompany any food and beverage product we offer. Establishing this indicates that before serving our customers at our outlets, we will ensure that that the get the relevant insights on the available foods and beverages for the specific day of the sale and at the time of interest. Specifically, we have hired nutrition and dietetics professions who will offer advice to the students at a counter next to the stands. Loosely, the professionals might engage the students to understand their aptness on proper feeding mechanism before analyzing the specifics of our food and beverages. Sequentially, students will make orders that tie with their nutritional needs and interests. 

Moreover, our business plans to adopt a seven-day beverage timetable to identify a procedural educative plan. Different types of blended juice will include; a green juice, a tomato vegetable juice, and strawberry –cucumber juice that is best known for polyphenols and antioxidants. Also, we will avail blueberry-cabbage power juice rich in anthocyanin and antioxidants, an apple-spinach extract to enrich our customers with vitamins K, a ginger-beet juice to provide workout stamina and oxygenation effect, and a carrot-orange juice to accelerate the acquisition of vitamins C in the students' bodies. This plan will facilitate how students perceive the intake of healthy beverages. This emanates from an observation that most students will eat anything that they come across because they do not know the sensitivity the body has towards consumables. Again, this aspect will curb the effect of generalizing the healthy elements of beverages and instead focus on educating the specifics of every product they take at our outlet. This way, students will observe a continuous diet observation through the time they spend in school. Following this familiarization, students will extend the same focus on the beverages they partake out of school for synchrony. 

To strengthen this culture, we focus on introducing an advisory board comprising of parents, students and certified health professional. This ad hoc advisory board will create emphasis on the campaign to denounce unhealthy dietary systems in the school. Also, the board will hold periodic seminars that incorporate the stakeholders of the school to consistently keep tabs with the perceptions and reception of healthy feeding at school and homes. These seminars will mostly aim to enlighten student parents on purpose and need to adopt the new food system around the school and out of school. Intuitively, when more parents and other school patrons grasp the advocacy of healthy foods, it becomes easier to elaborate the same to students back at home and in school. Also, the school administration will create better health-sensitive developmental policies that will benefit the school at large. 

To achieve this collaborative and inclusive progress, our business model should guarantee the students', parents and the administration that the foods and beverages served will contain no stimulants or dietary supplements. Attaining an amicable level of trust and guarantee for the participants will necessitate us to employ participatory schedules and regular examination checks. Firstly, we will provide parents with every day's food and beverages itinerary through hard copy publications. We aim to follow specified nutritional programs for given curricular periods. This way, parents can track what is in the order options for their children every particular school day. Additionally, parents can plan on their budgets needs before the start of every curricular semester. Secondly, regular examination checks will expedite the professionalism we allocate in our business as well as alerting our service providers on the requirement to adhere to the ethics and the genuineness of the business products. Accustoming these business dynamics will preserve the integrity of our work and the business model will establish better associations and competence. 

Furthermore, our business model aims at promoting the locally produced products. We will attain this annexation by providing a market for the local fruits and vegetable growers. Also, we intend to collaborate with the local food preparers to offer a distribution model for the foods that correspond to our quality requirements. Because the business model will be flexible to nest new healthy foods into the dietary plans, we will offer an avenue for the local producers to test the market perception of new products that will abide by with our health examinations. This incentive will spur the urge and the willingness for the parents to support our initiative because those who are farmers will stand to benefit from this collaboration. 

Finally, our business model adopts a profit-sharing remuneration method whereby the school is entitled to get 30% of the profits we make in a fiscal year. Mainly, this compensation will be in exchange for the space provided by the school administration as well as for the long-term contracts acquired. These compensation terms will implement without disruption, but they are subject to revision from the third year of operation. Notably, all other operating expenses that the business will incur as a result of its activities are entirely obligated to the business stakeholders at the time of the undertakings. Such costs include the board meetings, seminars and promotions, advertisements, promotion, publications and other forms of advertisements the model will adopt. 

Conclusion

Ultimately, the regular feeding habits in our local school draw major health concerns. While the uptake of healthy foods and beverages remain constrained by the availability of fancy junk foods, the health predicament that comes with these varieties is overpowering. Hence, there is an immediate need to curb the menace. First, it is important to note that junk food comprises of food additives and supplements which perpetuate the production of unhealthy food and beverages variety that have a detrimental result. Statistics indicate that most terminal diseases emanate from consumption of unnatural consumables. Conversely, the uptake of healthy drinks avails elements like polyphenols and antioxidants to the body. These components are stated to reduce the riskiness of acquiring cancer and the heart disease. Also, research from the Ohio state university indicates that apigenin compound from celery and parsley can stimulate the death of cancerous body cells (Izumi, Findholt & Pickus, 2015). While students are naïve to get the seriousness of these repercussions as they grow, the truth catches up with them as they become older and realize the need to observe proper feeding habits. Our business model will advocate for the healthy feeding and through the strategies mentioned above. Establishing a collaborative culture will divert the school stakeholders from living uninformed lifestyles and instead participate in spreading the awareness through significant adjustments of school food and nutritional policies. Additionally, our business model will involve parents through seminars and periodic dietary schedules to aid in examining routine nutritional products. Thus, they can precisely choose what is right for their children to feed at school. Also, we will provide a market to the local farmers for their food products which will be an act to appreciate the society and boost their economic standards as well. 

References

Datar, A., & Nicosia, N. (2012). Junk Food in Schools and Childhood Obesity. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management : [the Journal of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management], 31(2), 312–337. http://doi.org/10.1002/pam.21602

Izumi, B. T., Findholt, N. E., & Pickus, H. A. (2015). Peer Reviewed: Formative Evaluation to Increase Availability of Healthy Snacks and Beverages in Stores Near Schools in Two Rural Oregon Counties, 2013. Preventing chronic disease , 12 .