Students serve up winning concept

In October of 2010, Rosen College student Dave Schaefer passed away in a car accident. His death, though untimely, brought together his brother, Matt, and best friend, Kyle Roach. Both students at the college of hospitality management, Schaefer and Roach decided to immortalize their beloved family member and friend by entering the Joust Business Plan Tournament with their restaurant, named for and inspired by Dave.

"Dave was one of my best friends, and Matt's brother," said Roach, a senior hospitality management major. "He was my roommate and he just had this philosophy of great food and great beer. Basically we just wanted to take his ideas and form it into a restaurant. So Dave's Market is just all about living by the three F's: food, fun, and friends. So we just tried to incorporate that into our theme, just great food, great friends, and great fun."

Schaefer and Roach won fourth place out of 16 entrants in the annual competition, earning $2,000. They planned the restaurant, Dave's Market, around Dave's passions: fresh food and craft beer.

In addition, they wanted to create an open-air, friendly atmosphere.

"Our tagline was, ‘Chef-inspired seasonal cuisine with a local touch,'" Schaefer said. "We wanted to do the freshest food possible with local ingredients, but more of a fun relaxed atmosphere; not like a stuffy restaurant, like when you go into Season 52 it's really dark and very quiet. This is more of a market, open feel where we do craft beer pairings with the meal. We're a fun, relaxed atmosphere while serving quality food."

Each year, the UCF Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the college of business hosts the Joust Business Plan Tournament. This tournament gives students the opportunity to create a plan for opening their own business and present it to a judging panel of some of UCF's most distinguished alumni.

"[The Joust] is open to students from all disciplines; we have had most any kind of business idea you can imagine proposed over the seven years we've been running it. It's a cultural event celebrating entrepreneurship throughout the academic community," said Dr. Cameron Ford, founding director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

According to Roach, it took him and Schaefer six months of work, creating an innovative menu and conducting market research, to put together a 15-minute business plan presentation. The main focus of the restaurant was to provide consumers with what they have been wanting for years: food that is fresh and healthy.

"Our restaurant was solely based on providing fresh ingredients already, you don't have to have a healthy menu and a regular menu, it's all incorporated into one," Schaefer said. "We kind of started off that, and Kyle works at Carrabba's, so he has kind of the operational standpoint of how the day-to-day is run. And so we collaborated on the menu together. We did research on how to write a menu, and it kind of came together as we were writing it all.

Schaefer said that it took a lot of research into what consumers currently look for when selecting a restaurant in order to perfect their concept.

"We followed a lot of trends for what is happening in 2011 for the way that consumers should be eating, but they're not, so we wanted to incorporate that into our business plan," he said.

Both Roach and Schaefer plan to compete again in the Joust next year. Schaefer said that not only did participating in Joust expand his network list and boost his résumé, but he came away knowing a bit more about the opening your own business.

"I do want to end up in business somewhere, and I think that this has taught me more than any classroom could teach me because it's real world. I'm going out and meeting people and looking at what customers actually want to eat," Schaefer said.

Roach said that what he really gained from competing in Joust, besides a cut of the prize money which will pay off his final semester at school, was the experience of what life after college will be like, as well as the feeling of putting your ideas out there for the world to see.

"I really just saw how awesome it is to present your ideas and them be accepted by respected people in the public," Roach said. "I really gained a lot of knowledge on how to start a business and everything that goes into it. It's just a really great opportunity."