What’s Cooking in MKT 454

Priyanka Jayashankar is cooking up something exciting in her MKT 454 entrepreneurial marketing course at Iowa State University. Moving away from the standard teaching structure of daily lectures, Priyanka is always looking for new ways of providing a hands-on perspective to marketing and supporting student entrepreneurs within her course.

Andrew Nguyen, majoring in entrepreneurship within the Ivy College of Business, is the founder of Chingu BBQ, a Korean barbecue meal kit experience that is now hitting the market. Nguyen invited his classmates on a Korean culinary journey last week at the ISU Research Park. This past summer, Nguyen took Chingu BBQ through CYstarters, a student accelerator program run by the ISU Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship, and he has been working diligently to grow his business ever since.

Andrew Nguyen cooking Korean BBQ in the ISU Research Park atrium for his MKT 454 class.

Priyanka encouraged Andrew to showcase his product for the class, which meant fresh Korean barbecue, cooked by an expert, for everyone to enjoy. The ISU Research Park atrium was filled with the savory smell of perfectly marinated pork belly. For the students, this was an opportunity to evaluate Nguyen’s product and gain insight into a real-life entrepreneurial venture. For Nguyen, this was an opportunity to identify the strengths and weaknesses in his business and gain a better understanding of how people perceive Korean BBQ from a customer perspective.

“In class, we’ve talked a lot about the necessity of doing in-person customer discovery, and so having the opportunity to do this demonstration in person and receive feedback from my classmates is priceless,” said Nguyen.

MKT 454 students lined up to enjoy fresh pork belly, kimchi, and more.

Through this experience, Priyanka hoped her students would grasp the intricacies of food marketing, especially in the context of entrepreneurship. “I thought it was an especially unique opportunity to highlight Chingu BBQ, because it is cuisine from the Asian heritage, but also suits the busy Gen Z generation in that it is a meal kit.” She challenged her students to brainstorm how to innovate this product for the Midwestern market.

Nguyen isn’t the only entrepreneurial mind to come out of MKT 454. Many of Priyanka’s students are already running with their entrepreneurial ideas and ventures. Andrew Walton, for example, has crafted a new card game known as “Morbid Living”, a PG13 card game that puts a twist on the classic board game, “The Game of Life.” Walton’s experience in MKT 454 has helped him think outside the box in terms of marketing his product.

Priyanka’s mission for this class is clear – to help her students understand what it truly takes to be a successful entrepreneur and to see marketing through an entrepreneurial lens. As Andrew and his classmates dive further into the world of marketing, they continue to expand their entrepreneurial mindsets with the help of Priyanka, and their palettes, with Korean barbecue.