This week’s 1 Million Cups at the Kauffman Foundation featured pitches for an online publication devoted to local food and drink and a new brand of customizable sunglasses.
First onstage was veteran journalist Jonathan Bender, founding publisher of Recommended Daily, a digital news outlet devoted to the Kansas City restaurant, bar and food production scene. It launched last December.
Bender’s main goals are to cover local breaking news in the food and drink industry, provide in-depth feature stories about trends and people in the business, and recommend new places to try wonderful dishes and drinks that “you didn’t know you needed to have in your mouth,” he said.
Recommended Daily is a media company, rather than a blog, Bender said, and it will adhere to a code of journalistic ethics. Plans call for a quarterly print component in 2015.
“This is about building a sustainable newspaper, which sounds like an oxymoron,” he said. “But I believe it is possible.”
The publication is monetized by online ads, media partnerships, sponsored posts and the coordination of sponsored food and drink events. Readers are 52 percent female and 48 percent male, with readership roughly equal on both sides of the state line.
“Read it and share it and tell me what you want to read,” he said.
WYCO at 1 Million Cups
Next up was Lance Windholz, founder of WYCO Interchangeable Sunglasses. (Windholz is also a 1 Million Cups organizer.)
WYCO invites consumers to self-customize their sunglasses through interchangeable frames, temples and lenses that can combine different styles, patterns and colors to “unlock daily fashion possibilities” and “encourage collecting sunglasses,” Windholz said.
A single pair of premium sunglasses might cost $150, he said, but the mid-range price point of a pair of WYCO shades is $40. If WYCO’s just-launched Kickstarter campaign to raise $50,000 is successful, he said, the company could offer consumers three frames, four pairs of temples and two pairs of lenses—allowing for 24 different combinations—for $100.
“We think they’ll work great on college campuses on game day,” when the product’s parts can be mixed and matched to reflect team colors and even be hawked in the parking lot to tailgaters, he said.
Plans for the company include applying the same fad-savvy consumer customization to watches, shoes and other apparel, Windholz said.
“We want to own interchangeable apparel,” he said.
WYCO’s pitch had more pizzazz than the usual 1 Million Cups presentation, offering a playful sunglasses fashion show with “runway models” plucked from the audience and an explosion of multi-colored confetti.
