Entrepreneurial Spirit Fuels JMU Swimmer to Make a Splash in Food Truck Venture

Successful student-athletes tend to be masters at managing their time. Balancing achievement in the classroom and in competition while maintaining a healthy lifestyle takes discipline and constant management. So what happens when that successful student-athlete suddenly has free time due to an injury? Naturally, they fill the void by pursuing their own business.

Always one to be on the go but sidelined by hip surgery for her junior swimming season, Leesburg, Va. native Amanda Presgraves needed an activity to keep her busy during the recovery phase. So, she elected to funnel her extra time and energy into starting a new food truck business at JMU.

"I have always been someone to think of ideas but I never had time to execute them," Presgraves said. "Now I have no excuse, I had a good idea and I wanted to do something with it. So after seeing how successful the Starbucks truck was on campus, I wanted to combine that with how interested everyone is in local, healthy food on campus and healthy lifestyles. I wanted to help out and I want people to be more mindful of how they are eating so I was like 'I want to bring a food truck to JMU.'"

Equipped with an idea and not one to simply let an idea go unpursued, Presgraves needed guidance on her next step. As would be the case with most steps along the way, she sought help, beginning with JMU's Small Business Development Center.

"It was a fairly typical interaction where someone will come and say, 'I have an idea, and it's sort of vague and I'm not sure what to do with it,'" recalls SBDC Director Joyce Krech, who typically works with community members at a far higher ratio than JMU students when it comes to business development. "I can remember very clearly she has such an energy. She had a very clear vision of what she wanted, even though it was vague at the same time. The details weren't worked out, but she knew she wanted it to be this food truck that would engage faculty and students across all disciplines."

Beyond the simple fact of wanting a food truck, it was important to Presgraves that part of the truck include a connection to local farmers. SBDC Business Advisor Allison Dugan said, "I was amazed at her inclusive thinking about not just the university and the good of its students but also how she wanted to help local food vendors, food trucks and restaurants to be that conduit between the community and JMU. While we thought, 'wow she's got a lot on her plate to accomplish,' she did it in such a short amount of time and didn't see them as barriers or challenges to overcome. She amazes me because she just did it, got on the phone and made it happen."

Presgraves' timing worked out perfectly to quickly jump into a class being offered by the Small Business Development Center. The class, titled "What's Cooking," served as a pilot program for community members who wanted to start a food business. The class went as far as discussing how to start a business plan, pitching, marketing and more. It ultimately laid the groundwork for Presgraves to feel that her business idea could become reality.

With the class then ending, Presgraves needed to identify her next step in the journey. Eventually she learned of an interdisciplinary class about management offered through JMU's Center for Entrepreneurship. Now, she would have the opportunity to collaborate further with JMU students studying business, marketing, management, dietetics, graphic design and more to take her food truck idea to another level in terms of feasibility.

Carol Hamilton, Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship in the College of Business, couldn't recall any varsity student-athletes previously completing her business management course, but Presgraves quickly stood out to her and to local business partners who began to interact with her and her outside-the-box idea.

Hamilton noted, "You never know if an idea is going to work. It's all about execution. It takes a champion to execute who is willing to stick with it long term. Amanda stood out to everyone around her. Guest speakers, her peers, former alums all started to know Amanda. She is great at networking. Her energy and passion for the vision she had that none of us could quite see, but she saw it. She made a splash."

Presgraves made such an impression with that splash that she was recognized at the end of the semester with the Zane Showker Entrepreneurship Award, a $500 scholarship that recognizes entrepreneurial spirit. Hamilton added, "It was exciting to recognize a kinesiology major, who has such a vision and real passion for seeing student engagement and collaboration and community engagement. She's been fun to get to know. She knows an opportunity when she sees it."

As Hamilton explains, every potential project has a fatal flaw to be overcome. For Presgraves' food truck, that flaw was Aramark holding exclusive rights to food service on JMU's campus. Beyond needing Aramark's approval, costs would also be a significant hurdle for a student needing capital to get a project off the ground. As she did throughout the project, though, Presgraves simply sought out the right people and not only got Aramark's approval but also its backing in funding some aspects of the operational and startup costs.

Another hurdle soon emerged in the simple reality of the university academic calendar. With May providing a break from academic pursuit, Presgraves found it a challenge to keep her project moving forward at a healthy clip. Over the summer, her truck pursuit took a bit of a sabbatical as she pursued a professional opportunity in California.

Presgraves said, "I ended up working for a food company out there. While I wasn't directly working on the truck, it helped progress my mentality for my learning and how to apply it to my food truck. It was a neat learning experience."
Upon returning to campus, Presgraves found herself in a bit of a rut related to the food truck project until a chance interaction with former JMU Hall of Fame swimmer and current faculty member, Mark Gabriel.

"He helped me with how to move forward with this project with faculty members," she commented. "He was swimming before us one morning and mentioned he liked food. And I said, wait a minute, I like food too. As it turns out, he's on the same wavelength in terms of what I want to accomplish with this with campus collaboration and healthy eating. So he read my entire business plan and is all about it. It was really exciting to get his support."

With Gabriel's assistance and further advising from the Center for Entrepreneurship and the Small Business Development Center, Presgraves now finds herself in position to seek further faculty involvement. Ideally, she wants to create a course at JMU that will operate the food truck as a learning experience for students as a sustainable, long-term operation.

With the likelihood of the truck not being operational until the end of her time at JMU, what's the motivation for Presgraves to continue pursuing the idea?

"There is really nothing in it for me," Presgraves said. "People will give me a hard time saying 'you're stupid for not getting any money out of it,' but it was just super fulfilling to develop this and that's the fun part. The big driving force for me is to be able to sell cheap, affordable, healthy food to students. People often have this misconstrued perception that healthy food either has to taste bad or is overpriced, and I really want to change that and have them involved in that process. I hope that it's still sustainable when I leave and that there will be others who are passionate about it and have the vision and know what the truck is all about. The main purpose stays the same, to benefit the school and not the individual."

Hamilton added, "Entrepreneurs work towards legacies. It's not about them. They are more selfless than people recognize, because they have to sacrifice so much in the short term to make something happen in the long term. So it's about starting something up that's bigger than you that lasts beyond you. I see that in her. She has a passion for people and a passion for learning."

To her swimming coach, Dane Pedersen, Presgraves exhibits all of the traits described by Hamilton on a daily basis. He noted, "Amanda is an extremely thoughtful, energetic and passionate person. She is fueled by an insatiable, focused work ethic to realize her goals and beliefs. Her food truck project illustrates the drive she possesses. What Amanda is accomplishing is wildly impressive but in no way is it surprising. She is a great ambassador for not only student-athletes but also JMU. Her project is the perfect example of real-world preparation and opportunities JMU provides to its students, and while all of this will be beneficial to her, she will be the first to tell you she created this food truck because she really believes in its purpose and place in the JMU community."

Hamilton was quick to identify a correlation between traits that make both a successful student-athlete and a successful entrepreneur, saying, "I think those two are tightly connected. I love the student-athletes because they already come in disciplined. They understand that you have to execute the fundamentals with excellence in order to be able to achieve the teamwork to get the outcome. They already know that. The fact they are competitive gives them an edge too. They are always looking for a way to win, but not at the expense of others."

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