Foster Freshman Consulting: Tamarind Tree Restaurant

Throughout this consulting project, I worked together with other consultants, a project manager, and professional advisors who helped guide us on how to be a consultant. I was able to build strong connections with all these people and our client…Overall, this whole process has helped me work closely with many different people, allowing me to develop strong connections that I can hopefully continue on into the future.”

Hello, my name is Brennon Lee and I was a Freshman Consultant during the Spring quarter of 2022 in the BIG Foster Consulting Program for Tamarind Tree. Through this program, I have gained real-life consulting experience and gained valuable connections.

Our project was to help Tamarind Tree with a new business venture that they were exploring. They recently bought a building in Capitol Hill that they want to turn into a building that is a mix between a mall and a farmer’s market. They wanted pop-up shops inside the building along with a bar and dance floor where people could shop and drink. This idea hasn’t been seen before in the area, so we had to help Tamarind Tree figure out some logistics and advise them on the best ways to start and run this type of venture.

This project was my first time doing anything consulting-related. When I found out about BIG consulting, I wanted to try it out to see if consulting could be a potential career path for me. I learned how to create a SWOT analysis, market research comparing similar markets to our client’s market, and analyzing the current situation of our client and recommendations to benefit our client. I learned very quickly that consulting is all about the client. As a consultant, you are there to assist, support, and advise your client to take the best measures and actions to complete their current project. Sometimes your client doesn’t give you all the information that is necessary about them, which can be frustrating. However, you have to realize that you need to take a step back, calm down, and work with what you have. As a consultant, you want to do the best work that you can do for your client with the information that is given to you.

Throughout this consulting project, I worked together with other consultants, a project manager, and professional advisors who helped guide us on how to be a consultant. I was able to build strong connections with all these people and our client. For this specific project, I worked mostly on the management and organization team in which we focused on how Tamarind tree would hire employees and organize their building to attract pop-up shop vendors. We closely worked together as a team and interconnected our findings with the other team’s findings. We also worked closely with our project manager, asking her questions, and having her review all of our work to give us helpful feedback. During our weekly meetings, we also had professional advisors that would come to show us how to be a consultant and offer us advice on our projects. For example, when we were working on our final report, the advisors read through our report and left many comments that would help us make our report better. Overall, this whole process has helped me work closely with many different people, allowing me to develop strong connections that I can hopefully continue on into the future.

This quarter of being in BIG consulting has been full of ups and downs. There were many stressful times where we were working hard on our project, but it was also a lot of fun and I gained tons of experience. Thank you BIG consulting for giving me this opportunity and thank you to all the advisors and my consulting peers for making this project successful.