Cider, doughnuts and data: WMU Haworth students partner with grad to make memories
KALAMAZOO, Mich.—Real-world experience is baked into every class at the Haworth College of Business. And for students in the marketing strategy course, that experience just happened to include cider, doughnuts and fall fun!
As Dr. JoAnn Atkin designed her capstone marketing class, she connected with Justin Wendzel, B.B.A.’05, owner of Gull Meadow Farms in Richland, Michigan. Wendzel had a part-time employee who was looking to enhance guest experience at the farm and happened to be in Atkin’s class. Since it was the busy season at Gull Meadow Farms, fall was a great time to engage students in a project that would give them real-world experience and provide Wendzel with some new ideas.
Growing a legacy
A graduate of WMU Haworth, Wendzel knew the impact of his education and has fond memories of his own capstone class with Dr. Steve Newell. The marketing skills he learned at WMU have served him throughout his career, and he welcomed the chance to partner with current marketing students.
Connecting students with alumni and local businesses is a winning combination. “The main reason I like to do collaborations with alumni and industry partners is to provide a real-world context for students to apply their skills and knowledge of marketing,” Atkin says. Once Wendzel and Atkin met to discuss course structure and expectations, they determined the fit was as natural as cider and doughnuts.
Gull Meadow Farms isn’t just a business for Wendzel—it’s a legacy. His parents ran the farm for many years, and Wendzel came back in 2008 to run the business operations full time. In 2021, he and his brother, Jared, purchased it and started expanding the business, building on what their parents created. “Mom and Dad are super hard workers,” says Wendzel. “My dad was never afraid of change or new ideas, and since Jared and I took over, we’ve been able to start implementing some of those bigger ideas that didn’t make sense for them to take on.”
Like his dad, Wendzel isn’t afraid to take risks and is always looking for ways to improve how visitors interact with the farm. That willingness to innovate made him the ideal partner for a marketing class full of students with diverse perspectives.
From classroom to corn maze
Last fall, Atkin’s students were tasked with creating a marketing plan for Gull Meadow Farms. Groups worked on secondary research on the agritourism industry, competitive benchmarking analysis and primary research, and they visited the farm. Students then developed recommendations within a given budget on target markets, product and service positioning, pricing, and promotional strategies.
Understanding Wendzel’s goals for the farm was key to creating valuable recommendations. “The first step we took as a team was talking to Justin to better understand what he was looking for,” says Daniela Padilla, B.B.A.’25. “He explained the main goals he wanted to achieve through marketing, and we had to ask questions to make sure we really understood his needs and what would be valuable to him.”
Not only did the students gain real-world experience, but Wendzel harvested some real ideas to consider for his marketing efforts. “There were a couple of groups that I could have almost hired to run my marketing plan as written,” he says. “Some of them came up with the same suggestions that we had already thought of and were close to implementing. How they presented those proposals, including ways to take them further, helped to guide us as we moved forward.”
To Padilla, the fact that Wendzel saw the value in their ideas was meaningful, especially given that this was a capstone project in her senior year. “It was really rewarding to see that some of our recommendations were actually implemented. One of the ideas we suggested was bringing in student influencers who could create more youthful, content-first videos, which is something that Justin later implemented. It was cool to see part of our work turn into something real.”
And the lessons learned are ones that students can take with them into their careers—just like Wendzel did. “One of the clear takeaways from several groups was to make sure you support your recommendations with hard data,” says Atkin. “The team that ‘won’ had the best data-supported recommendations that Gull Meadow Farms could easily put into practice to meet their specific business goals.”
Padilla was able to directly translate the skills from this project to her career. “My biggest takeaway was learning how to build a marketing plan from zero and take it all the way to a final product that was valuable for a real client. I now understand how I could take this same process and apply it to another client in the future.”
Sweet results
As an entrepreneur, Wendzel faces challenges every day, but the mission of his business—helping people make memories—keeps him going. “It is so rewarding that my job is all about creating core memories,” he says. “When I hear the stories about the memories people have made because of the experiences that we’ve crafted at Gull Meadow Farms, it makes it all worth it.”
That contribution to the community hasn’t gone unnoticed. Gull Meadow Farms was recently named the Southwest Michigan First 2026 Chamber Member Small Business of the Year. Wendzel attributes this recognition to his parents’ legacy and the collective work of everyone at Gull Meadow Farms. “As much as people see me as the face of this organization, there is not a chance in the world that I could do this on my own. There are so many people that sacrifice and are behind the scenes that make it happen. They are all the reason we’ve gotten to the place we are today.”
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