Mark Kennedy"GoFood" is the company's name. It's two syllables by design -- short, memorable. That's the modern way. Think Google, Yahoo.
You can't buy stock in the GoFood grocery delivery service just yet. But someday ... who knows?
Two wunderkind high school students, Roy Michael Roman, 17, of Cleveland High School, and Conner Clabough, 18, of Walker Valley High School, fleshed-out the business plan for GoFood one day at a corner table at the Panera Bread restaurant in Cleveland. One can imagine them there, riffing back and forth, brainstorming over bagels -- the kind of encounter that might be recalled one day in a corporate biography. GoFood is literally a back-of-the-napkin enterprise.
For now, GoFood is offering deliveries only inside Bradley County, although the young men have big expansion dreams. They charge $15 per order, and most of their work flows through their website thegofood.wix.com/gofood. The website, which was designed by Roman, looks slick and professional. GoFood is "easy as pie," the company's home page promises, and they aim to "bring home the bacon." The pair also embraces "old school" marketing. One day, they put on their comfortable shoes and handed out GoFood fliers in downtown Cleveland.
For now, GoFood is just a little spark of a company, a few smoldering leaves that Roman and Clabough are trying to huff and puff into something great. Who knows if they'll succeed, but telling them they can't is like blowing oxygen across the embers of their ambitions.
"We want to be the Amazon of groceries," insists Clabough, an honor student and former grocery store employee.
"We want to turn this from a novelty to a necessity," asserts Roman, one of the top students academically at Cleveland High, and who is bound for the University of Pennsylvania.
If these sound like overblown slogans from the CEOs of a glorified lemonade stand, you're missing the point. Roman and Clabough understand that GoFood probably won't be their life's work -- but like all Alpha kids they can't (won't) wait for college to begin applying their big brains and grand ambitions.
Even if they've just got the summer to tinker with GoFood, they are all in. After all, they are networking, selling, thinking, adapting -- skills that will serve them well in the 21st century economy. Roman and Clabough are part of a post-professional generation of American young people who seem to understand that, in addition to earning a college degree, they need to develop a portfolio of entrepreneurial skills. It's no longer enough just to pick a career path such as medicine or law. Both Roman and Clabough plan to attend law school, but they can see themselves eventually as business owners or politicians. What they want to be when they grow up is "anything and everything."
"My dad has always drilled into my brain, if you want something to happen you have to have the 'want-to,'" says Clabough.
"I immediately knew we had the same sort of drive," says Roman, nodding toward his buddy. "I've been raised on the mindset that if you take on a task, you have to finish it."
"Everyone has ideas," adds Clabough. "Everyone can change the world in their own way. Those who become successful are those who take time to go out and do it."
To their credit, both Clabough and Roman seem to have the entrepreneur's gift of picking partners with complementary skills. Clabough, who once worked in a grocery store and understands the universal template for supermarket layout, noticed that some of his supermarket's elderly customers could barely lift a gallon jug of milk. That set his mind spinning about the possibilities of a service business to bring groceries right to their front doors.
The young men reconnected through social media -- they had once played YMCA basketball together -- and soon realized that they shared a passion for business. If Clabough understood the tactical side of the business, Roman was a natural free-marketeer with both technical chops and charisma to burn.
If you dive deep into discussion with these guys, a truth emerges. They both seem to intuitively understand that leveraging your energy by cultivating like-minded friends is a key to success. To see these guys together is to understand that they are probably going to be friends for life -- forming the foundation of what may eventually be a network of high-energy, young strivers who are bound for great things.
Somewhere, embedded in their idealism, is the future of America.
They represent the spark by which the flame of American exceptionalism is preserved.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.