The Apprentice – Crisps
Monday, November 29th, 2010This week the challenge was all about crisps. The teams had to create two new flavours of crisps and sell them to the German market. In order to successfully complete a challenge such as this, market research is imperative, both in terms of crisp flavours and the German market.
At the start of the task the project managers remained in England to manage the production of the crisps while the teams went to Germany for market research and to set up meetings with suppliers. It seems that both teams had already set their flavours before even thinking about market research, at least that’s what the editing on Stella’s team led us to believe.
The show featured a heated phone call between Joanna and Stella, where Joanna had just finished interviewing Germans in shops and asking them what kind of crisps they would like, and what kind of food they enjoy. At this point Stella and her team had already chosen to proceed with a “British Foods” theme, and Stella seemed to be upset that Joanna was telling her that they were proceeding in the wrong direction.
Chris’s team on the other hand decided to go into the German market with German crisp flavours. This was a great idea, until the buyers tasted the crisps and indicated that they tasted nothing like their German food counterparts.
In the end Stella’s team won and Chris’s team were sent to the boardroom. Although Chris the project manager had been in the bottom three and in the loosing team for the past few challenges, Lord sugar sent military and operations expert Christopher home. Lord Sugar said that although everyone liked Christopher, he didn’t have an entrepreneurial spark, and was sent home.
Whether the teams had any control over the situation or not, it was ridiculous for the teams to choose crisp flavours and then undertake market research. The teams communication styles was also very inconsistent, with Joanna and Laura speaking very quickly and not being sensitive whatsoever to the German buyers while Stuart actually made an effort, which resulted (much to our dismay) in his name in German, Herr Baggs, trending on Twitter during the airing.
Do you think any of the candidates that are left have an Entrepreneurial spark?

