Year: 2011-12

Company: Prairie Ventures

Liaison(s): Rod Markin, Betsy Berentson

Prairie Ventures is a private holding firm based in Omaha, Nebraska. Its portfolio includes a wide range of emerging technologies and companies in various business sectors, but with a focus on the healthcare industry. Prairie Ventures is dedicated to helping early stage companies with high market potential navigate the difficult process of establishing a business. Calorie Café is a new diet company that Prairie Ventures has been incubating. Built upon behavior modification, the Calorie Café diet is a proven weightloss solution which facilitates weight management even after the program has been completed. With a diet program that is both sustainable and easy to follow, Calorie Café promises to be an improvement over the many diets currently on the market. The Prairie Ventures TMP team was asked to identify market opportunities for Calorie Café and to develop a go-to-market strategy for bringing the company’s products to market. To accomplish this objective, the team spent the first semester performing an in-depth analysis of the diet industry. This included the analysis of both corporate and consumer markets, as well as related service industries such as food delivery, counseling, and on-line tools. Based on this work, the team identified corporate wellness as the best market opportunity for the new diet program. During the second semester, the team developed a product plan for the Calorie Café diet. To better understand consumer needs, the team performed a month long diet experiment which also served as an in-depth focus group. For the project’s final deliverable, the team developed a business plan that summarized all findings and provided a comprehensive go-to-market strategy for Calorie Cafe.