By Alina Rosenkranz and Maggie Hannon
Mace Provost makes dreams come true with Bacon Barn
Getting a hot and sizzling piece of bacon with a 15 ounce cup of coffee would be a dream for many meat lovers.
Sophomore Mace Provost hopes to make this dream a reality with the business he has been pursuing with the Entrepreneurial Scholars Program (E-Scholars) called Bacon Barn.
“It’s basically a drive-thru bacon house that serves bacon by the slice and coffee by the ounce,” Provost said. “Everyone loves bacon, but where can you actually go out and get a perfect slice of bacon that’s not like a fast food restaurant, and you don’t have to wait 30 minutes for it at a sit-down restaurant?"
Provost, who has been working on this project since Fall of 2014, has transformed his vision for the business throughout his experience with E-Scholars. He added coffee to his business as he was looking for something to pair with the bacon.
“At first I was thinking about bacon and how to incorporate that into something that’s already happening in the Northwest,” Provost said. “Since coffee is so integral to the culture here, I thought it would be a perfect pairing of the two.”
He hopes Bacon Barn will be the “In N’ Out” of coffee shops, having a very simple menu where customers will be able to buy coffee by the ounce. Provost believes buying coffee this way will allow for a unique experience for coffee-buyers.
“The idea is you bring in your travel mug and we fill it up just with the perfect amount, so that we can get 10 ounces, 11 ounces, 13 ounces and then we will just charge you like 10 cents per ounce,” Provost said. “So right now if you go to a Starbucks and you have your travel mug, they will fill it up for you, (but) they might charge you for a 20 ounce cup, but it may only be 18.”
Provost will join 11 other students on a trip to Cambodia and Thailand through the E-Scholars program. He hopes to meet with business owners in the cities of Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Bangkok in order to better understand his own business.
“There’s so many coffee shops in Bangkok that I want to learn how are they able to differentiate themselves from all their competitors directly across from them,” Provost said. “I think gaining that insight can definitely travel into my business in the future.”
Andrew Herzog and team develop media aggregation software Aprio Systems
Senior Andrew Herzog, political science major, is developing a software called Aprio Systems which allows the user to search for news on a particular topic from a variety of sources based on their preference of the news layout.
Herzog is working on this software with UP alumni Philippe Boutros, and UP student Tylor Honsinger, who is doing the coding, for his e-scholar project. They first came up with the idea because they consume a lot of news and care deeply about politics, international relations and how these topics are portrayed by the media.
“Something we all care about is the way that stories are told can really shape people's opinions and turn them away from each other,” Herzog said. “So we wanted to find a way that people can still gravitate towards things they like, but broaden their understanding. Get a little better look on what all sides are saying.”
After a trip to New York last fall, the next journey will take Herzog to Bangkok, Thailand, Phnom Penh, Cambodia and Siam Reap, Cambodia, during spring break in order to network.
“I was meeting with people in the news and also in the tech business,” Herzog said. “Then in Thailand I’m hoping to meet with similar companies and individuals.”
Their team consists of equally enthusiastic people, who come from different educational backgrounds and based on that they each take on varying roles in the development process. Herzog hopes that Aprao Systems could become a quality check for news in the future, including information from blogs, newspapers, Reddit and many other sources.
“We wanted to come up with a way that we could display online news comprehensively from a lot of different sources, all on one page that makes sense to the reader,” Herzog said.
Aurora Lyra brings yoga to the office
For people who work in the corporate world, finding time to exercise and reflect can be very difficult. For senior Aurora Lyra, making time for these activities in one’s business can help create a better and more productive work environment.
For her E-Scholars business project, Lyra, who is also working with senior Emily Crow and currently teaches yoga, created a website called corporateyogapdx.com in order to help people in the corporate world take the time to move away from their desks, reflect through exercise and create a better place for employees to work.
“As a society in general, we focus so much on the output and the results, but not on the process and really investing in people and investing in things in the long term,” Lyra said. “(Taking) an hour to reflect and (taking) some time for yourself... is something that we don’t offer in general to people. And I want to create that space, especially in a setting where that gets completely overlooked.”
Lyra’s business idea was originally a children’s yoga class, but since there are some children’s classes in Portland already, she thought it would be better to work with the idea of the corporate culture.
“I really wanted to cater to demographics that are a little bit overlooked, so looking at kids or looking at people who work sitting at a desk eight hours a day and not getting a lot of physical activity,” Lyra said. “I wanted to bridge the gap between teachers that want to access (the business) market and the companies that want to get involved in that healthy lifestyle, corporate wellness kind of thing.”
By going to Thailand and Cambodia, Lyra hopes to better understand corporate wellness through different countries and cultures.
“I think it’s really important to get an international lense on the picture,” Lyra said. “(Corporate wellness) is not something people do habitually or right off the bat, so I’d be curious to see how this new trend is developing in other parts of the world. And how we can create something of value by learning from the work that’s being done in other places like Thailand and Cambodia.”
Lyra sees this venture as something that can move beyond Portland to other areas of the country and internationally as well.
“One of the reasons that I really like this venture is because it can be scalable,” Lyra said. “So when I say I am really excited about bringing yoga to the corporate world in Portland, I really just consider this the first step. I want people taking time to breath and stretch and reflect, to be a part of companies all around, not just here.”
Erin Peterson and Taylor Tobin create sustainable clothes - changing locations
Within the current options for sustainable clothes there is a new star rising: A sustainable clothing truck which will move from place to place.
Taylor Tobin, junior economics major and entrepreneurship and innovation management minor, is working with Erin Petersen, senior German studies and communication studies major, on a joint e-scholar project to fill in the gaps of fashionable sustainable clothing availability.
“It’s kind of a combination between Erin and I’s projects from last semester,” Tobin said. “I did a lot of research on fashion trucks across the country. My idea was to incorporate small brands from Pacific Northwest designers, and Erin’s idea was a lot about sustainability in fashion.”
Tobin believes it is all about knowing what you want to do and getting out of your comfort zone during the networking process.
Tobin and Petersen got the opportunity to network in New York and get comfortable with this process. Over spring break, the pair will continue their networking as they travel to Milan and Venice, Italy and Slovenia. They will be meeting with two textile producers and with a ‘made in Italy’ brand for sustainable cloth and many more.
“You talk about having business meetings in class, but to actually contact someone in New York and then actually go have those meetings is very different,” Petersen said.
Currently they are at the stage prior to actually building the physical store. Their mobile boutique is intended to differ from the usual selection of sustainable clothing by offering a variety of more fashionable cloth. The boutique will offer brands that only use fair and sustainable cloth.
“For several years I have tried to shop sustainably for clothing,” Petersen said. “But I ran into the problem with either the brands I know are sustainable are more like the typical thing you’d think of sustainable, kind of hippy-dippy and (have) weird colors. But when you go to a normal store, how do you know the brand is sustainable or not?”
