Thursday, June 8, 2017

Week 10 EOC: Not Failing

One reason places fail is that they choose a poor location. On Eastern, there is now a Mediterranean food restaurant, that spot has constantly been closing because it's a poor location. Many businesses before that had failed because they weren't able to bring people in. Buying new furniture is a big problem as well. New equipment isn't necessary, you can get a used one for half the price and buy replacement parts or simply repair it. "Do not go crazy about buying new equipment and furniture, instead think about the benefits of used equipment." (Behmen). I think every restaurant owner knows that they need to promote their business, but the problem is that they don't know how to promote themselves. "make a budget for your advertising and get to work which will bring success.. Make some creative ideas for restaurant promotion or pay to some marketing company to do this work for you." (Behmen). Another mistake that businesses make are the partnerships involved. Some companies work with their spouse. An idiotic idea, just look at any article saying that you shouldn't work with your spouse. Not just spousal dissenting opinions, but just generally getting a bad partner who has no idea what to do. Sharing a financial risk can be too stressful for everyone to handle. "You share financial risks which can be very stressful. Actually I have bad experience and had it twice. I have lost some of my best friends" (Behmen). 

Opening up a restaurant on the strip would pose as a problem because you're a small time owner. A great place is to start around somewhere people go, but not to do anything crazy. Eastern by the 2-15 is convenient, but traffic can be a hassle at times. Townsquare is easy enough for people to be around, but it's usually retail areas and recreations. Downtown Summerlin has fun areas for clothing, food, recreation, and restaurants that everyone can enjoy. With radio advertisements, a single radio ad can cost up to $1,500, social advertising is free, and word of mouth works okay, but not everyone talks to each other anymore.

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Week 9 EOC: Monetizing Lemonade

When making a money-making business, the whole idea is to make profit. Making profit is easy, take your cost to make the good, then sell it 35% mark up and you gain profit. For lemonade, it's cheap to make a simple class. For 8 ounces, you can sell a glass for a few dollars and make $1.50 profit because just to make a single class takes $0.20 to make. There are already businesses around the world that sell lemonade, along with other food items. Hot Dog on a Stick sells corn dogs and lemonade. That's just about it.

When making a lemonade product, you want to make sure it's the best that no one could beat. You could also add different flavors, like strawberry lemonade, raspberry lemonade, orange lemonade, a limeade, or mix various fruits. Turning lemonade into slushies or icees can help business if your stuff start to get bland to customers, or make a lemonade ice cream product. Making lemonade ice cream can have that ice cream flavor and texture that everyone loves, but it has that lemon zing that keep attracting lemon pepper lovers.

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Week 8 EOC: Lemonade Day at Whole Foods

As I currently stand, I am thinking of the costing for the lemonade stand and ingredients, going to grab permission from an alkaline water dispenser on Eastern and Horizon Ridge to donate water for my lemonade stand so that I don't have to use some of my money and increase profits for the children. Tables can also be borrowed, I know a few organizations that have tables that aren't used that they'd be more than happy to let me borrow for a good cause. As for the lemons and cane sugar, some money may need to be used up. I currently have no children to use for my stand, I will have to call a school or the boys and girls club of Las Vegas. I will give them my introduction as a culinary management student and I'm proposing a hypothetical lemonade day that will be good for the community, and for the project I will need a letter emailed or hand-written saying that I have permission to have four children assist in running my lemonade stand on my particular day for lemonade day.

Lemonade Day at whole foods

The plan is to run a lemonade day at Whole Foods 100 S Green Valley Pkwy Henderson, NV 89012. With their permission, four children will set up their stand for lemonade, and sell their product for $5 a pop. Our lemonade is made with freshly squeezed lemon, water, and white sugar. We want to sell the people, not only lemonade, but knowing that they helped children broaden their minds and help shape the future. "Prepare yourself mentally and through organization. Think about how the product or service will benefit this specific customer. 202" Our product will help customers help the children creating responsibility, and learn business skills. 

Getting started with a lemonade stand is easier said than done. We must create a business, cost out our ingredients, and make sure we are profitable. "A business can make a profit only if the selling price per unit is greater than the cost per unit. 226" With this, it will help us determine that we must sell more than what it cost to actually make our product or else we won't make profit. Not only that, but we must help reach our "break-even" point. That is determined by how much we must sell to come up with the number that covered the cost of all that we bought. Not only the product that we bought, but also the set-up. "start-up expenses would include stoves, refrigeration, food processors, tables, chairs, utensils, and other items that would not be replaced very often. 227" With the start-up, our start up might include the tables, clothes, and signs for our business name.

When we start up our lemonade stand, it's something that people don't see very often, and we can use that to our advantage. "Younger entrepreneurs can have an advantage here because relatively few young people start their own businesses. The print, radio, and television journalists in your area may want to hear about you 179" No one expects young businessmen to be running their own lemonade stand. This will develop great public relations for the media. Everyone will want to be "in" on this. "the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its public. 179"

One way to attract customers is just word of mouth, but sometimes that isn't enough to get your business out there. Before business even starts, you'd want to set a name for yourself out there. "Hold contests, throw parties, or put together unusual events to attract attention and customers. Contests and sweepstakes can gather valuable names for your mailing list. 180" This way, you're already know, and if you market correctly, everyone will know where we are. Sponsorships, as we talked in class help the community all together, like a sports team, the Green Valley Recreational Center, since it's nearby, an opening for food business, or a public pool or park. "Sponsoring a local sports team is a great way to involve your business in the community and meet potential customers. Sponsorships are a way of advertising. 180"

We want to sell to our customers, but not just them. We want potential investors to recognize us and our business, or to say our "lemonade day". "Entrepreneurs sell constantly, not just to customers but to potential investors, bankers, and people they want to hire. 198" We also want to make sure these customers are satisfied on a minute-by-minute basis. So many things can go wrong that we want to make sure doesn't happen. "customer service is everything you do to keep your customers happy, especially after they’ve bought something. 206" If something goes wrong, like someone being dissatisfied with out product, we've lost a paying customer, who could potentially complain to 7 of their friends. "Policies, practices, and processes that a business uses to manage its interactions with customers to generate maximum customer satisfaction and optimal profitability. 209"

Of course, we will also be attracting customer by calling them over, and the mistake I constantly see are parents making their children go up to strangers to talk to them and some customers just aren't interested in their product, whether they're cookies, or donations to charity. "If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” making a sales call on that person will probably be a waste of time for both of you. 201" We can teach children great people skills to get them out of their shell and develop speech and language to help better their future. there's going to be a lot of people who say "no" and it'll hurt at first, "This brings together the various strategic and tactical components of the marketing efforts into a single comprehensive section. 185" If they can learn to channel what went wrong and learn a different approach to selling lemonade, it'll bring in more customers and they will leave satisfied.

Anyone can sell lemonade. "Many costs are associated with the establishment and growth of a small business. These include start-up purchases, fixed and variable costs, and cash reserves. 226" It's simple, lemon, water, and sugar. "Every entrepreneur has to be able to identify the benefits his or her product can provide and to make an effective sales call. 198" The benefit for our lemonade is the salted rim. Add some water to the rim, and salt the edges, add a thing slice of lemon and you have yourself a faux margarita lemonade! The people of Whole Foods. This will be a higher cost to make our lemonade, but if we're selling at $5 each, and we sell at least 50 glasses, that $250 right there. Even if we spent $50 just for supplies, that's $40 for the kids and $40 for me, and it's split evenly. We broke even and even cashed a little bit for ourselves. "sourcing, procuring, production, and logistics, which go from raw materials to end consumers across multiple intermediate steps 390" These are all for kids, and a little for me, but this will help children grow up into young entrepreneurs to own their own business.


Mr. Virgil,

I would be happy to assist you in starting your lemonade stand with a $50 loan to get you started.   Nielsen's Frozen Custard would be proud to help a young entrepreneur like yourself get started in your new business.  Good luck and please don't hesitate to ask if you need anything.

Thank You,

Howard Zayon

Nielsen's Frozen Custard




Thursday, May 18, 2017

Week 7 EOC: Benefits of Entrepreneurship over Franchising

Talking about entrepreneurship, we say that running your own business is a risk. That is true, but running a franchise is also a risk. Running a franchise, you don't own the business, as the book says,"But most employees have one thing in common—they do not own the business; they work for others who do. They know how much money they can earn, and that amount is limited to salary or wages," pg 4. If you're an entrepreneur and your business fails, at least you're only hurting yourself, and not the franchise. If you're working for a franchisor, and you fail to keep people coming in, you not only hurt yourself, but also hurt the franchisor because they put money into you to open their business.

Entrepreneurs have their own goals, in the book it states what might be some goals for entrepreneurs. "Recognition from peers and others could also be a goal. Financial success may be just one of many measures of achievement for an entrepreneur." pg. 5. Whether it's to look for happiness. "What makes a business work is not only profitability and cash flow. Each entrepreneur has his or her own goals and objectives for the business. As an entrepreneur, it will be up to you to determine how you want your business to be and to make it happen." pg. 24. When you do your own business with your own values and goals and it becomes successful, there is no greater accomplishment, especially a goal that you've set for yourself. 

With the fulfillment aspects of benefits of being an entrepreneur, it ties in with recognition, financial rewards, and ownership of something. I think the real benefit is the independence knowing you don't have to rely on someone once you've made the business successful.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Week 6 EOC: Developing a Marketing Plan

  • demonstrating to potential investors that your company can grow and offer returns,
My restaurant plan involves skating. Skating isn't for everyone, but everyone who's interested in skating likes to watch skaters do their tricks and warm ups, and wipe outs. "focus on one thought: What does this customer need? Visualize your product or service fulfilling that need. If you believe in your product or service, and there is a good fit, you will be able to see this without any problem." pg. 201. Why do fans love NASCAR? They love the sound of the engine, the smell of petrol going through the air and burning tires, the devastating crashes and the celebration of the winning car. That's what brings people back. My restaurant will bring skaters and tricks, and a show that everyone loves when watching people skate.

  • identifying the most beneficial target markets for the organization,
When you identify your target market, you want to find who you're selling your product/service to. Whether it's a family with 3 children and 2 dogs, or and elderly couple looking for a home care nurse that is available 24/7. Finding the target defines who you will sell your product to and once you've found that, you're that much closer to keeping your customers. Friends, family, and professionals can help you define this as it says in the text in the book, "If you can get relatively objective friends, colleagues, or family members to read the plan as early as the first draft, you can probably get valuable feedback and ideas for improvement. If you need assistance with spelling and grammar, or any other aspect of the format, this is the time to get it." pg. 57 My target market for my skate park restaurant includes kids, teens, and young adults who are into skating, BMX, and generally things that are noted as adrenaline inducing activities. 

  • evaluating the competitive and industry environments,
My location will be an indoor skate park. Indoor is absolutely needed because if you're going to eat, you can't have wind and dust being blown into your food, plus the wind just distracts and messes up the skaters, so you'll be getting more failures than successful kick-flips. My competition would be those who are themed restaurants. I can't compete against a place like IHOP or Denny's because those places just serve food. I offer more than that. "If you can find a sufficiently large niche to sustain your business, you can set the company apart from the competition and maintain the advantage. A focus strategy can work with differentiation and cost leadership." pg. 19. I offer an experience, a show, cheers, and wipe outs. 
  • illustrating the pricing strategy,
My pricing is the tricky part. I want to be able to price out my food, which isn't going to be costly, just grilled cheeses, hot dogs, pizza, and burgers. Something just to fill the stomach, but a large part of costing is your labor. My labor will consist of cooks, but the waiters are more than just waiters. They are the skaters/performers. I need to be able to generate enough revenue to be able to pay 3 to 10 performers.

  • detailing the promotional plan and budget.
Back in the day, the way skaters promoted themselves were through sick videos and flyers stabled onto boards and street lamps or electrical polls. Now, we have social media and youtube videos. Skating montages are a huge part of Youtube and Facebook. Click a video on Facebook and related videos will show businesses and ads. If you can relay those ads to Facebook users you can react out to your target market in a matter of weeks and everyone's coming on board.

Thursday, May 4, 2017

Week 5 EOC: Still Hanging In

A businessman was talking with his barber, when they both noticed a goofy-looking fellow bouncing down the sidewalk. The barber whispered, "That's Tommy, one of the stupidest kids you'll ever meet. Here, I'll show you."
"Hey Tommy! Come here!" yelled the barber. Tommy came bouncing over "Hi Mr. Williams!" The barber pulled out a rusty dime and a shiny quarter and told Tommy he could keep the one of his choice. Tommy looked long and hard at the dime and quarter and then quickly snapped the dime from the barber's hand. The barber looked at the businessman and said, "See, I told you."
After his haircut, the businessman caught up with Tommy and asked him why he chose the dime.
Tommy looked at him in the eye and said, "If I take the quarter, the game is over."

Week 10 EOC: Not Failing

One reason places fail is that they choose a poor location. On Eastern, there is now a Mediterranean food restaurant, that spot has constant...