Idea for "Mise En Place" Ordering

In the world today it's difficult to take the time go shopping to prepare truly fresh ingredients for a meal. The winner of this year's TED Talks wish was Jamie Oliver (http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html) - a chef who says that he wants to cut down on obesity since heart diseases and other diseases related to diet is killing more and more people every year. He wants every person to be able to prepare at least 10 fresh meals at home and to understand nutrition and eating healthy. So here's our idea:

It's kind of like netflix, but for fresh groceries. There will be a website that has a selection of recipes on it. You can choose from the available recipes and order something online up to a couple of days in advance. There will be a distribution center where you can pick up the raw ingredients in the portions you'll need, but not prepared yet. The customer can then take the package home, and follow the instructions to prepare a quick, delicious, and healthy meal. This can help save time with shopping and deciding what to cook for the evening. Because we're doing it on a large scale, the price won't have to be much extra for this huge convenience.

We'll even try to partner with local farmers with the advance ordering so they can take advantage of this program.

The distribution center can also offer cooking classes for those who aren't exactly sure what to do.

Volunteering & Social Entrepreneurship

There are so many ways people could help the world while starting a business at the same time. It really takes some getting involved with this type of thing though to see the importance. There are people all over the world that have much less then us and it's difficult to imagine. At this stage in our lives we tend to just think of ourselves and aren't really capable of feeling for others. This is understandable and I'm usually guilty of the same crime.

This spring break, though, I decided to spend it helping to build a home with Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans. The guy we were building for had lost all of his belongings in his home when Hurricane Katrina hit. It's hard to imagine such devastation, but once you get out there and meet the people that had this happen to them and hear their stories first hand, you become a little more compassionate.

With this experience, it is obvious there are many ways that we can do things to help other people and benefit society at the same time. Creating a product or business that saves lives or helps improve peoples' lives in the form of a nonprofit organization doesn't necessarily mean you don't make any money. I can certainly see that one might not make as much money, but the feeling you get when people are grateful because of your actions is worth more than money.