Striving to help restaurants and coffee shops boost revenue
James Duong MBA ’23, founder of Pluto Street, is a participant in the upcoming Demo Day at the Entrepreneurship at Cornell Celebration. His business aims to provide a turnkey solution using drop shipping to help restaurant and coffee shop owners gain retail revenue with no upfront costs.
“I grew up working in my parents’ restaurant and I remember diners would talk about products throughout the dining space or ask about where we got our glassware,” Duong said. “I noticed that hotels were starting to use their place as showrooms for retail. I thought, ‘Why can’t restaurants do this, too?’”
In other words, Duong said, restaurants and coffee shops can use Pluto Street to run an e-commerce shop with no costs. Restauranteurs can easily source products, create an e-commerce page and generate marketing materials to start selling retail products with no upfront costs.
“There’s nothing like eight experts picking apart my business. It’s challenging, but that’s how you grow and I think my communication skills will benefit from it,” Duong said.
Duong noted the stress and long hours of the restaurant business and said he was inspired to relieve that stress. “The idea was then how do we leverage the space itself and existing customers to find additional revenue opportunities,” Duong said.
Pursuing entrepreneurship was always something Duong wanted to do.
“When I started at Cornell, I actually did not intend to pursue entrepreneurship right away; rather, it was meant for down the line. Cornell gave me the confidence to say, ‘Why not now?’” Duong said. “There are so many resources at Cornell. The network and Cornell brand is amazing. The ability to interact with accomplished classmates and guest speakers helped me reflect and index my skills.”
Duong encouraged anyone interested in pursuing entrepreneurship to utilize Cornell’s resources. He recommended the Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) programs, which connect students with successful entrepreneurs or operators for one-on-one meetings to help work through a business idea. Duong also found the entrepreneurship listserv, an email list for people to share ideas, resources and reach out for help, useful in the process and suggested finding a professor or someone on campus to speak with.
eLab has been a great resource, he added, with advisory board meetings serving as one of his favorite learning experiences so far.
“There’s nothing like eight experts picking apart my business. It’s challenging, but that’s how you grow and I think my communication skills will benefit from it,” Duong said.
Alumni have been helpful, too. “I have sent many cold outreaches to alumni and the response rate is amazing. So, certainly use Linkedin and find Cornellians that you want to connect with,” Duong said.
As his business grows, Duong said he hopes to build out his platform to support local businesses and their growth.
“As we grow our network of local businesses, we can play a larger role to help brands build their local presence and this will only further benefit local businesses,” Duong said.
eLab Demo Day takes place April 13 from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the Statler Auditorium.
Written by Jesse Osbourne
Strategic Communications at Cornell University
