Restaurant Placements
This idea was formed in the true style of the entrepreneur. A former president of CEO, Derek Henze was walking downtown Whitewater. The owner of Pinnacle Bancorp, Rodney Lohff, stopped Derek about a restaurant down the street. Rodney started talking about the amount of traffic going through the business and said, “I wish I could get some of my advertising in that place.” And the idea was born. Derek asked about placemats and found that the restaurant had them about a year ago. Rodney asked Derek if he had any experience with design. Derek said, “No, but I can learn.”
Derek and Rodney coordinated with the owner of Jessica’s Restaurant to develop the placemats for the business. It is good business when everyone wins: Jessica’s received free placemats, Downtown businesses received great and cost affective advertising, and CEO received money for the organization. The first project came from idea stage, to coordination, to implementation, to complete in less than 3 weeks.
The idea still persists as an on-going opportunity for CEO and the downtown businesses. The UW-W CEO Chapter is evolving this idea into another external business for the organization. We generated around $500 of income and also a renewable opportunity. The placemats are done quarterly generating over $2000 per location.
CEO’s goal is to expand this to multiple restaurants that want to help their local community and also student organizations at UW-Whitewater. The future of this external business will be Entrepreneurial Internship opportunities for UW-Whitewater students.
The money generated through this venture was put directly back into the organizations day to day operational expenses such as free food at meetings, national fees, and marketing expenses.
