Multimedia Reporting (Adler-Utsler)

When Mike Carlson, Lawrence, senior, wakes up around noon on Sundays, he is usually worn out and hungry. After long weekends, which begin for Carlson on Thursdays, his cupboards are always bone dry and he is never in the mood to go shopping. Luckily for Carlson, as well as many other Lawrence and Manhattan residents, foodpatio.com allows him to order food online to be delivered directly to his doorstep.

“I don’t even want to get dressed on Sundays, and I certainly don’t want to leave the house to get food. Foodpatio.com takes care of this problem for me,” Carlson said.

Carlson represents one example of the hundreds of people who have an account with foodpatio.com.

Foodpatio.com also lets users to place carryout orders. Customers can pick up their carryout orders as soon as they arrive at the restaurants. People with jobs or busy students, who spend a majority of their days in hurry, can take advantage of cutting long lines around the lunch hour.

This convenient innovation was made possible by an optimistic, up and coming entrepreneur named Justin McAuley.
McAuley, who is a KU alumnus, founded and owns foodpatio.com, which services the Lawrence and Manhattan communities.

The site requires users to sign up and create a profile before placing orders. After an order is made a fax along with an automated phone call is sent directly to the restaurants. Signing up for foodpatio.com is free. Users only need to provide an email address along with a contact phone number. A home address is required for delivery orders.

Foodpatio.com subscribers can choose from eight restaurants in Lawrence: Bambinos, Pizza Hut, Gumby’s, Wheat State Pizza, Pizza Shuttle, Pita Pit, Big’s B-B-Q, and Jersey Mikes. In Manhattan, users can only chose between Planet Sub and Pita Pit. All restaurants deliver except Jersey Mikes.

The idea for foodpatio.com arose during McAuley’s junior year at KU after he enrolled in entrepreneurship classes. He credits those classes with energizing him to consider starting his own business.

“I guess you could say my entrepreneurship classes inspired the idea. They definitely showed me that starting my own business was a reasonable and possible goal,” McAuley said.

Determined to go in to business for himself, McAuley put his mind to work. He realized that in a college town like Lawrence a majority of the citizens spend a lot of time online and spend a lot of money eating out. These two factors combined led to the formation of foodpatio.com.

McAuley’s target market went beyond tired college students looking for a way to eat without getting off their feet. He wanted to aim at the busy, on the go college student as well.

Rob Rossiter, Omaha, Neb., senior, works at the Wagnon Computer Lab inside Summerfield Hall at KU, and he says he places carryout orders from his desk at work.

“Foodpatio.com saves me a bunch of time on my lunch break because my orders are ready as soon as I walk into the restaurant. I love not having to deal with the lunch rush,” Rossiter said.

Rossiter can multitask; while doing his homework and assisting students with their computer complications, he can order his lunch and save 10-15 minutes by not waiting in line once he arrives at the restaurant.

McAuley felt strongly that he had a lucrative idea, but before could get anywhere with turning an idea into a reality he needed to develop a functional and easy to use website.

Admitting that he knows next to nothing about designing a webpage, McAuley yielded to the experts for assistance.

He called the KU Computer Science and Engineering Department, and requested assistance with a web design project. The engineering department emailed its undergraduate and graduate web designers, and received around 20 responses. McAuley said he interviewed 10 people and selected three for the job.

He credits the web design team for making foodpatio.com possible.
“My web design team did awesome work,” McAuley said. “They really made foodpatio.com possible. I had a vision, but they were able to make it a reality,” McAuley said.

With a website up and running McAuley’s focus became selling restaurants on the idea of taking online orders.

“I had a sales pitch that I took to each restaurant manager. I explained to all of them that they were missing out on a large chunk of revenue, and I was essentially offering free advertising for their companies. Plus there was no risk for the restaurants because they could not lose money,” McAuley said

Foodpatio.com receives a small percentage of each order placed from the site, but restaurants do not owe it anything other than what it brings in.

“Basically I don’t make my 10 cents until they make their 90 cents,” McAuley said.
Actually foodpatio.com earns from 5 to 10 percent per order placed. The percentage depends upon the restaurant. All of the restaurants except Pita Pit and Gumby’s Pizza have delivery minimums ranging from $6 to $10, so foodpatio.com is earning no less than 30 cents on most orders.

Joe Sholz is the store manager at Wheat State Pizza, and he says foodpatio.com works well, but it is not changing Wheat State’s business.
“We tried an online ordering system before, but this one [foodpatio.cm] works better because it sends an automated phone call along with the fax,” Scholz said. “I don’t think it has been a big money maker for us, but I don’t think they have advertised enough yet.”

McAuley estimates that he invested $10,000 into foodpatio.com, and he anticipates that the company will rise above red numbers before the end of the year.

“We are not in the green yet, but we will be soon, and that will help me get advertising, and hire people to make foodpatio.com bigger,” McAuley said.

Advertising represents the key to making foodpatio.com widely popular throughout Lawrence and Manhattan, but McAuley has not had the funds to run any ad campaigns.

He wants to get an ad in the University Daily Kansan and create brochures to hand out around the dorms on campus, but the UDK turned him down multiple times, and brochures are too expensive.

“If I could get some ads in the Kansan than everyone at KU would know about foodpatio.com and I think a lot of people would like using it.”

McAuley also thinks spreading the word around freshmen dorms is vital to the growth of foodpatio.com.

“A lot of freshmen don’t have cars, they don’t know their way around town, and they are not familiar with the local restaurants,” McAuley said.

Foodpatio.com has 500 subscribers just by using word of mouth. That number could grow exponentially. With little less than 28,000 undergraduates at KU and a little more than 23,000 undergraduates at Kansas State, McAuley hardly scratched the surface of the demographic his company aims at.

The site began operation last spring, but McAuley was still a college student then, and he could not devote the same amount of time to growing his business as he can now. Since he graduated last May he has been planning advertisement campaigns, talking to potential investors, and thinking of ways to make foodpatio.com more successful.

He says he is not sure where the business is headed long term, but he want to continue running the show for the foreseeable future.

“I am always on the look out for an investor or potential buyer, but for now I am committed to making foodpatio.com a better business by adding restaurants and serving more people. I definitely think it has a bright future, I just need to spread the word.”

McAuley is currently on the job interview circuit, but being an entrepreneurship drives him. He wants to be a business owner instead of climb the corporate ladder.

“Owning my own business has always been my dream,” McAuley said.
He says foodpatio.com has a future, and that will be true as long as the word spreads throughout the Lawrence and Manhattan communities and students keep ordering food to their doors or from their computers at work.

Patrick Menihan’s attention was drawn away from the TV. He thought he smelled something burning. No big deal he thought. Someone is probably just cooking a pizza downstairs. His attention returned to the TV. Then the stench of smoke intensified. He opened his bedroom door to see a cloud of smoke rising up the staircase. He ran down the stairs and saw one of his roommates dumping water on a small fire in the oven.

Luckily the house did not catch on fire that day. However, in the event of a fire Menihan did not have the proper means of evacuation at his disposal.

His room was one of two rooms in the attic at 1122 Ohio St. He lived in the house from August 2006 until July 2007. Both rooms failed to meet current fire codes in Lawrence, which state that any third floor or higher bedroom must have at least two exits. In this case no such exit existed.

“I never realized how unsafe I was living in that attic, fortunately the worst thing that happened was a close call,” Menihan said.

Landlords renting out unsafe rooms and renters not realizing the lack of safety has become a common occurrence in Lawrence. Rich Barr, Lawrence Fire Marshal, said he is sure landlords rent out many houses, especially older houses in and around the Oread neighborhood, that do not meet fire codes.

“I know there are a number of them [houses that do not meet fire code] out there. Some landlords are great, but some try and fly under the radar until they get caught,” Barr said.

Finding the houses with unsafe rooms and forcing the landlords to make the necessary adjustments is the challenge for Barr.

Right now no mechanism exists for finding the unsafe houses. The fire marshal only has jurisdiction over multifamily dwellings, but the only way Barr can find out whether or not a house is a multifamily dwelling is by talking to the residents.

“Obviously if we see multiple names on the mail boxes than we know it’s a multifamily house, but we are not going to sit out on the street and watch people going in and out of houses,” Barr said.

Barr suggests that renters need to be responsible for notifying his office if they suspect that their house might not meet fire codes because he does not have the right to barge in and start snooping around unless the tenants invite him.

“Landlords do not want us to find out because it could be expensive for them, so we need to hear from the tenants,” he said.

Elizabeth Grosspietsch, Barrington, Ill., senior, currently lives in one of the rooms in the attic at 1122 Ohio St. She took the initiative and called the fire marshal’s office.

“My mom heard I was living in an attic and she asked me if there was a fire escape. When I said no she flipped out and told me that was not right,” Grosspietsch said.

Grosspietsch arranged for Barr to inspect her living situation right away. After his inspection he found that the two rooms in the attic did not meet fire code.

Barr said he contacted the house’s owner Serina Hearn and informed her that she needed to build a fire escape immediately.

Hearn, who was not available for comment, owns Rainbow Works, LLC and rents out more than 25 houses to hundreds of students at KU. She moved immediately on the fire escape project. Her crew erected a fire escape within a couple of weeks according to Grosspietsch.

“Our landlord was not reluctant at all; she finished the job really fast. I was just annoyed that we had to call the fire marshal in the first place. When I am paying a lot of money to live somewhere I expect that it’s a safe place,” Grosspietsch said.

Rainbows Works constructed the fire escape at 1122 Ohio St. out of wood, but Barr said the code allows wood as long as it meets certain guidelines.

“Metal is ideal for fire escapes, but wood is permitted as long as it is treated lumber or cedar because those types of wood are not prone to rotting,” he said.

Barr said that any person who lives in a multi-storey house should have their attic and basement checked out to make sure it meets fire codes. Basements can be problematic in older houses because they tend to have small windows that do not make for an easy exit.

“The situation we want to avoid is to have anyone trapped in a basement or on a roof where we can’t get to them in an emergency,” he said. “If people let us know than we can put houses on our radar screen and make the landlords accountable.”

After an inspection the fire marshal notifies the landlord. If improvements need to be made the landlords are granted what Barr referred to as a “reasonable amount of time” to make the necessary adjustments. If landlords do not comply then unsafe rooms are not allowed to be rented out.

Concerning the future, Rich Barr wants to find better ways to keep an eye on landlords and the houses they rent out. He said he is trying to get multiple groups together in order to notify him about potential problem houses.

“We are trying to get a handle on it, but we need groups to come together,” Barr said.

Elizabeth Grosspietsch said she sleeps much easier at night knowing she can escape safely in an emergency, but she knows not everyone can say the same thing.

“I encourage anyone who lives in an old house around campus to call the fire marshal. Fires are rare, but I would rather be safe than sorry,” she said.

When he is not working and he is not at school Bob Sheretts, Omaha, Neb., senior, is most likely sitting on his coach holding one of two things in his hand: a Playstation 3 controller or an Xbox 360 controller.
He is the proud owner of both Sony and Microsoft’s next generation video game systems. He spent $1000 to own them both.
Sheretts says he began playing video games a long time ago, and he plans on continuing to play as long as game developers continue to produce fun games.
“I’ve been playing video games since I was a kid and I am proud to be part of a generation that will be able to dominates their kids in video games,” Sheretts said.
He considers himself a committed game player, but not an obsessive one.
“I definitely play video games more than I watch TV. I play about 2-3 hours per day, but if I have something more important or fun to do than I don’t let video games get in the way,” Sheretts said.

At 21, Sheretts represents precisely the target market at which advertisers aim. And now with a generation that plays video games as much as it watches TV, ad agencies are working with game developers in order to help their clients break into the video game market.
The video game industry set a record by generating $12.6 billion in sales in 2006. This number included the sale of hardware, software and accessories. Software sales alone equaled $6.46 billion up 6% from 2005, according to the market research group NPD Group.
Since 1996 the video game software industry grew from a $1.8 billion dollar business into a $6.4 billion business. As total sales soared to new heights the price of software remained the same.
Nintendo released its Nintendo 64 game console in 1996. The games cost $60. In 2006, Sony introduced the Playstation 3 console, and its games costs $60. This proves people are buying a significantly greater number of video games now than 10 years ago.
These staggering numbers grabbed the advertiser’s attention. According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) 75% of the game console playing market is under the age of 35.
High demand for video games combined with the fact that young males buy the majority of the games makes in-game advertising incredibly attractive.
So attractive that Microsoft purchased the New York based Massive Inc. in May of 2006 for $200 million. Massive created a world-leading network for video game advertising. The company provides a method for companies to put their ads into the video games worlds in a lifelike manner.
“Our goal is to put our clients’ brand names inside the video game world in a way that will seem realistic to whomever is playing the game,” Ken Simon, Massive sales manger for the central region, said.

For example, in Electronic Arts Sports’ 2006 FIFA World Cup the sidelines of the soccer stadiums are lined with brand names ranging from T-Mobile to Hyundai. The game uses the real sponsors of the World Cup
“We have found that most gamers like the ads because they feel it makes games seem real,” Simon said.
In Project Gotham Racing 3 on Xbox 360 gamers can see McDonalds as they drive cars around Las Vegas and New York City. The game also features billboards with brands names such as Samsung and Bridgestone. This method of advertising does not seem invasive to the gamer, but it does not go with out notice.
“FIFA World Cup is my favorite game and I know the ads in the game are there for a reason. I appreciate how they make the game seem more realistic. Sponsorship is a huge part of soccer, so it should be a huge part of soccer video games,” Sheretts said.
Game developers pay special attention to detail to ensure the ads enhance the realism of the games, and do not make gamers feel as if they are looking through the yellow pages.
Games are so detailed that in NCAA March Madness 2007, also made by EA Sports, the schools sponsored by Adidas have an Adidas insignias on the players’ uniforms, while the schools sponsored by Nike are marked with Nike swooshes.
According to studies conducted by Massive this scheme works. The company boasts a 64% increase in brand familiarity for its clients and 41% increase in purchase consideration.
The study was based on two groups playing the same game. One group saw the ads in the game and the other group did not.
Making games more realistic and complex comes at a price. Next generation games (games made for Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii) cost as much as $20 million to produce. That is nearly triple the amount it cost to make games for the last generation of video game consoles (Playstation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo Gamecube).
Higher production cost mean game developers need to find a new source of income to continue making a profit. Selling ad space is one of the best ways to accomplish that goal, which explains the explosion of ad dollars being put into video games.
In 2006 in-game advertising made $77.7 million globally, and that number is expected to double by the end of 2007, according to a study conducted by the Yankee Group.
At Electronic Arts, the console software industry leader, the future depends on making ad sales.
“We will not be able to survive if we do not continue to sell ads in our games. Making games fresh and exciting for consumers is driving up production costs and advertising is the best way to respond,” Scott Gamel, public relations manager at Electronic Arts’ Redwood Shores studio, said.
In fact, EA joined Microsoft in August of 2006 when it signed on with Massive Inc. The contract was signed for two years and gives Massive the responsibility for all in-game advertising for EA titles.
With EA on board two of the industry’s largest software companies bought in to the business of in-game advertising. Research suggests it is the wave of the future. The Yankee group predicts that by 2011 developers will sell $971 million of ad space.