Assignment 28A – Your Exit Strategy

1.     Within 5 years, I expect to sell my venture to a larger grocery chain, preferably Whole Foods, Fresh Market or Lucky’s Market. I would want my grocery store to work with a company that cares about corporate social responsibility, in particular reducing food waste and feeding under-served communities. I do not plan on making it a family business or passing it on to my children because I’m not sure if they would want that for themselves, they could pursue another career outside of the venture.

2.     I chose this because realistically, in order to maximize corporate social responsibility efforts, it would be more helpful to work with a larger grocer with great morals and priorities. If my end goal is to help as many people as possible by donating food or reducing food waste, I cannot do it single-handedly within my venture; working with companies that have a plethora of resources, financial capital, human capital, etc. in my opinion is the best exit strategy.

3.     I think it influenced the opportunity I have identified and what I was planning to use to attract customers. Initially I wanted it to be a local, small business because people could find value in supporting small shops over big corporations. In the end, my idea is not ground breaking, places such as Whole Foods have a bulk area, where you scoop as much as you’d like, but my idea would just be the bulk bin section applied to the entire store. I’m not sure if that changes the foundation in which I built my venture upon after all of these blog posts. However at the end of the day, I want to want to be an ethical company and if another business has the resources to help and their values align with mine, the combination of 2 could maximize the amount of people we could help.