Melody Hossaini, a candidate in the last series of BBC TV’s The Apprentice, social entrepreneur and founder of InspirEngage International blogs about the first episode in the new season of Young Apprentice:
Week 1 task: Make frozen treats and sell to the public for the highest profit
We’re off! Twelve 16 and 17 year-olds battle it out for the £25,000 prize fund!
At a time when everyone’s talking about youth unemployment, these young people are showing Britain that they’re proactive and driven for success.
After deciding the sciency team names, Hayley Forrester and Harry Hitchens were chosen as project managers. It’s the biggest risk in the competition to be project manager in week one and as I said on Twitter last night, I still can’t believe I did it!
When thinking about their chosen frozen treats, Harry Maxwell, who is quickly becoming my favourite to win, hit the nail on the head when he said: “We’re not trying to innovate the market, just sell the most.” I was extremely impressed, as was Lord Sugar, with his forethought and calculations in forecasting sales so that they didn’t end up over spending.
But as for James McCullagh, apple and watermelon? Really? Those two flavours aren’t even complimentary; no wonder I saw a girl buying it to feed her dog! As Danwong_nyy88 said on Twitter: “Wrong flavour chosen, apple & w/melon. Ice cream flavours not great, too extravagant. Simple flavours work best.”
Unfortunately the girls’ lack of attention to detail resulted in wasting mixture due to not having enough ingredients, but they got one crucial thing right: pricing! I predicted on Twitter that the girls would win and @Sarabelle1985 replied: “With those extortionate prices, they should!”
On the boys’ side, all the poor beach-goers ended up hearing was Captain Vanilla shouting “50p A SCOOPPPPPP”. But you’ve got to hand it to James; at least he was proactive throughout!
The result: The boys spent just over £100 and made £559.20 profit, and the girls also spent just over £100 with a very impressive profit of £708.34. Well done Kinetic for carrying on the trend of girls always winning task one!
The problem: The boys priced too low: £1.50 for one scoop and £2 for two. James even suggested they should lower it to £1 a scoop.
In the boardroom, Harry H proved to be one of the most composed and professional project managers I have ever seen and even succeeded in being the first PM on a losing team to not be blamed by any of his team mates. A bit of bitching (and silent finger-pointing!) led Lord Sugar to come out with a classic one-liner: “Never mind Ben and Jerry, this is more like bloody Tom and Jerry.”
In the end it was goodbye to Mahamed Awale. His big gold watch said the time was up! It’s not easy to go first, but beat thousands to get onto the show. Well done and best wishes to him.
A final word of warning from Lord Sugar to James: “Watch it, ‘cos I’m watching you.” (ohhh getting interesting!)
Conclusion: The boys’ team (Atomic) were good at costing and projections and the girls’ team (Kinetic) were good at pricing and marketing. Together it would have been the winning frozen treat recipe!
Join me for live tweets @Melody_Hossiaini and another blog post next week as the two teams venture into the parent and baby market!
