Comida Con Causa
Spring 2017
Summary
In my last semester as a sophomore, I started a student-run business with 4 other sophomores. We learned a lot about food production in the United States, from GMOs to food insecurity. We then formed a business around which part of food production affected us most.
Humanities
We started off the semester with Model United Nations. We started off with a few practice situations, that were preparing us for an actual MUN conference that we prepared for for weeks. I represented Venezuela, and our topic was all matters of food security. Here's a link to my position paper, and a link to my facts about Venezuela paper. This, I think, was meant to really just throw us into the food issues that affect the entire world, so we were aware of the extent of this issue.
After MUN, we delved a little bit more into food in the United States. We did a few socratic seminars about articles relating to food issues. We also watched Food Inc, a documentary about the corruption in the food business. I thought this part went a little slow, but I think it was beneficial so we knew which problem to focus on with our business. And even though it did go slow, I did find what we were learning about pretty interesting, since even though I had already seen Food Inc., I didn't really understand the extent of the corruption and problems with food in the United States. It was very eye opening for me, and made me inform my family and urge them to buy, for example, grass fed meat.
Our Business
The next stage of our project was mainly about starting our own business. We were put into semi-random groups and asked to come up with a product to sell. I wasn't put in the exact group I had planned, but though I think we were all reluctant to work together at first, we ended up all coming together to make a great product. We knew we wanted to do cold brew coffee from the beginning, but we felt we needed something to go with it. Initially, we were going to sell donuts. However, through the testing stages, we decided blondies would both pair better with the cold brew and be easier and cheaper to make and produce in larger quantities. Since this project is called Comida Con Causa, which means "food with a cause", we wanted to do something that would help people. We were planning on making labels stating facts about food insecurity in America, but we were approached by one of our teachers about an organization that helps refugee women learn English. We were notified two weeks before the end of the project that we wouldn't be able to donate to them, which was disappointing since that was most of the appeal of our product, but we've now been told we can either donate individually or as a class, so we'll see what happens. I was not personally interested in starting a business, and I'm still not, but it was new experience at least. I feel like maybe I didn't get the full experience though, because I sort of isolated myself and just focused on my part of the group. I was in charge of most of the design aspects, along with some of the writing. I feel I should have inserted myself more into the other aspects, I dipped my toe in so to speak, but I think we could have all made an effort to make every aspect a group effort. Everything still worked out fine, and I think the end result was great, but maybe we would have all gotten more out of it rather than just it being something for a grade if we had pushed ourselves.
(The first design of the logo)
(The second draft of the logo)
(The final draft of the logo)
Besides designing the logo, the other jobs in my group were making the food, determining the cost of our product based on the ingredients, the elevator pitch (English and Spanish), and writing the company description. The original plan for everyone was to sell at an actual farmer's market, but we ended up setting up our own little farmer's market outside of the school. Our group sold out and made around $100, which is pretty good considering everything we sold was under $4.
Spanish Aspect
In Spanish class, we did multiple mini pieces to this project, besides just learning Spanish. Our first project was making an instructional video in Spanish on how to make a family recipe. My dad's side of the family has a recipe for guacamole dip, which isn't a traditional Mexican guacamole and instead an Americanized version using sour cream and other ingredients. We also made a recipe page out of this recipe for a cookbook. Here's the link to my recipe page, and the video itself is below.
We also did in class Comida Demos. What these were were groups of two demonstrating to the class how to cook a dish as the class followed along. These were also entirely in spanish. I don't have any videos of these demos, but here are the links to the scripts for all three of my demos:
Comida Demo 1
Comida Demo 2
Comida Demo 3
While I didn't love doing the comida demos, I feel like I did expand my Spanish vocabulary a little and became a little more confident with my speaking.
Comida Demo 1
Comida Demo 2
Comida Demo 3
While I didn't love doing the comida demos, I feel like I did expand my Spanish vocabulary a little and became a little more confident with my speaking.
Infographic
We also made an infographic for Humanities class. We researched a topic of our choosing, based on what we had learned earlier in the year about food, and put together some main facts about the topic. I decided to write about the effect of pesticides, because I feel like everyone knows that they're sort of bad, but don't know the full extent. I actually didn't really know myself, and wasn't aware of all of the side effects it has on the brain. This aspect of the project honestly felt very added on and wasn't super interesting, but I did learn a few things and I guess that's something.