Little Cocoa Bean Co.

Students enrolled in the Management capstone class “Strategic Management” partnered with The Little Cocoa Bean Co., a local start-up organization seeking to provide culturally diverse and nutritionally superior baby foods to local families.

In addition to sales of baby food and products related to baby food production, The Little Cocoa Bean Co.’s mission is to “to provide families with access to vital information, tools and services (related to nutrition) during their child’s first 1,000 days of life,” therefore they also plan to offer training courses for new parents out of a new storefront in Jamaica Plain.

Student teams helped Little Cocoa Bean with a breakeven analysis for their baby food, retail and training products, analyzed census data to identify strong demographic, socio-economic and geographic target market segments and identified potential public and private partnerships that would provide the dual benefits of service to the community and growth of the Little Cocoa Bean brand. Last, students assessed the feasibility of Little Cocoa Bean sourcing their food ingredients locally versus from larger, national distributors.

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"Participating in the live case study project with Emmanuel College students was an incredible experience. The students were bright, thoughtful, insightful, probing--all the things I hoped they'd be while working with me. I learned a lot about my own company through this experience and walked away with assets to help me quickly execute on several important projects. For any entrepreneur, but especially the solo-preneur, this experience provides thought partners to help drive business forward without requiring extra headcount. I was blown away by the student's final presentations!"
-Tracy Skelly, Founder of The Little Cocoa Bean Co.