Rebecca McInerney

ADHTea: A Friendly Guide For Meal Times

Week 3:

Outline: A cookbook for neurodivergent people who want to eat homemade meals but struggle with motivation, getting started and accessing large chunks of text. This cookbook aims to motivate and encourage neurodivergent people through its choice of quick, healthy but tasty meals and easy to read layout. There will be quick-wins, tips and even QR codes that take you straight to video instructions so that everyone can learn to cook!

Week 4:

Primary Market:

• The main target audience would be neurodivergent people e.g. people with ADHD, ASD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia etc.
• Many of the symptoms related to neurodivergence make cooking difficult due to motivation, lacking in confidence and getting easily distracted. This cookbook would be marketed by showing that all the steps leading to cooking a meal are made easier and are therefore accessible to everyone through use of an appropriate layout, use of pictures and interactive elements e.g. QR codes to videos/pre-made online shopping lists.
• RESEARCH: I would need to find out the most popular way to target neurodivergent people – this might be difficult as the book might not be something they are looking for in the supermarket, so would it be easier to target online through tiktok/influencers etc? Or could placement of the book within the supermarket help? Also could partnerships with supermarkets and their online shops be a way to market the book?

Secondary Market:

• Gift givers: The number of adults being diagnosed with ADHD in the UK has increased by 80% meaning that lots of newly diagnosed adults haven’t been given the tools to ease the symptoms related to their diagnosis. This cook book would be the perfect gift for anyone recently diagnosed and hasn’t had the opportunity to learn skills to ease their symptoms.

Simon and Schuster: They have published similar titles aimed at the ‘busy woman’ and for people who do not enjoy cooking such as ‘The ‘I don’t want to cook’ book’ by Alyssa Brantley. Although this is similar to my concept, there is an opportunity to be more ‘disability focussed’ by adjusting the layout, instructions and title for people who want to cook but find it difficult due to their disability.

Publisher:

Competitor Titles:

• ‘The ‘I don’t want to cook’ book’ – Alyssa Brantley (S&S)
• ‘The Quick Roasting Tin’ – Rukmini Iyer (PRH)
• ‘As Cooked on TikTok’ – Gordon and Tilly Ramsay (PRH)

Ongoing Research

• Market research targeting neurodivergent people and their shopping/cooking habits
• Look into appropriate charities to potentially pair up with
• Partnerships with supermarkets’ online shopping channels for marketing
• Cookbook sales figures
• Considering different options for keeping the price down for the photography/home economists.

Week 5

Specifications:

• Hardback or paperback: HB
• Length of book: 120
• Size of book: 254mm x 29mm x 197mm
• Price: £20
• Number of images planned: 50

I chose to price my book at £20 as that is on the lower end of the price range for cookbooks and also leaves me with a 60% net profit.

Week 6

Summarising USPs

• Disability-first cookbook with quick fixes/tips aimed at neurodivergent people who want to cook
• Accessible format (Type face, QR codes for visuals etc)
• Cooking mixed with motivation and well-being.

Ongoing Research

Book Layout

The book itself is fairly small to ensure that the person cooking can learn/follow a few recipes that they can practice and grasp. It also eliminates the overwhelm of decision making, which is a common difficulty that neurodivergent people face.

The layout itself will be one recipe per double page spread and each recipe will have a photograph to show what the food looks like to aid the decision making process. Each recipe will also have a QR code to link to videos and also to pre-made shopping lists within a supermarket website (a partnership required) to limit the amount of steps it takes to get to the point of cooking. Through my market research, many people responded to suggest that they did not want to see large chunks of text, so it will be minimal. Short, easy to follow instructions on a coloured background so that the recipe is accessible for all.

Other feedback included asking for graphics to show how things should be chopped. At the front of the book, there will be pages dedicated to cooking terminology with pictures to show what is being asked that can be referred back to for each recipe.