Our final project for Professor Bernstein’s “Perspectives on the News” class was called “A La Cart.” The project dealt with different aspects of food and vending carts. I was excited to work on our final project with my group. Our niche was how vendors market their carts and the foods they sell. For my part, I was do a story on a company that delivers cookies to college students at their dorms. The company is called Insomnia Cookie; of course I did not know that at the time. It took me several days of research on the internet, searching newspapers online until I found it. Of course, once I found out who they were, I had to call them. When I called them that day no one picked up the phones (I called more than one number). That same day I also left them an e-mail. I planned to try and call them the next, but as my luck would have it that was not to be. When I got up the next morning I was extremely ill. When I finally called their office that is located in New York University my luck did not get any better.
When I called I spoke to someone named Lauren (she did not give me a last name). She then told me to e-mail her at [email protected], and I did that as soon as I got off the phone with her. She told me that she needed to see the questions before she could answer them.
These are the questions I wanted to ask them:
1) Who does the baking?
2) Do you have a central bakery?
3) Where did the idea come from for cookie delivery as opposed to opening a bakery or store?
4) How long have you been in business?
5) Who/What is your biggest competition?
6) Why did you decide to deliver cookies instead of other food products?
7) When it comes to delivering the cookies and milk there are only certain campuses available to choose from. Why is that?
8) Are you planning to expand the number of colleges you deliver to?
9) Do you only deliver to campuses? If so why?
10) I am a Baruch College student, if I wanted to order these cookies for delivery would it be possible?
11) Are you planning to expand the choices of cookies and brownies that you currently sell?
12) What is your most popular cookie? Brownie?
13) Do people really order the milk?
14) Which one is ordered more, chocolate milk or plain milk?
- Courtesy Of Huliq.com
I finally got tired of this brick wall and decided to take a different turn with my project. I decided to interview someone on their thoughts based on what they knew about the company. For this report I interviewed Johanna Echeverria who is a student at Baruch College. When I told her the story of Insomnia Cookiesm the first thing she said was “Is it really worth ordering cookies and then taking time to wait for them to come? She said that she could prefer getting her own cookies. I told her about the variety of cookies sold by Insomnia Cookie. I asked her what her favorite cookie was and she said it was peanut butter, but that chocolate chip was a close second. I informed her that the company also delivered milk, plain and chocolate and asked her who she felt about it. She feels that they should start selling strawberry milk.
As our phone interview continued I asked her about her feelings on the fact that Insomnia Cookies seems to deliver to universities with college dorm rooms. She felt that they should expand because there are many people our age who would love to buy this product.
I let her know the price of the cookies and then asked her what the maximum amount of money she would be willing to pay for these cookies. She said that for four cookies and a glass of milk her maximum was 15 dollars.
I asked her about what other food she, and college people in general would like to see delivered to the students. She told me that ice cream would be a brilliant choice.
I ended my interview with this question. What was the first cookie you ever had as a child? She thought about for some time and then said it was an Oreo.
At the beginning of my research for this article I felt stuck between a rock and a hard place, but now I am satisfied with the work I did for this article.