My business idea is opening a cafi??. I will be opening my cafi?? in Greenwich. It will be situated in the town centre near the Cutty Sark to attract as many potential customers as possible. My cafi?? will provide a view to the river and the city. The town centre is a popular area, has a wide number of attractions that attract tourists from different parts of the country. It also has good transport links which makes it easier for people living in the area, and tourists to travel in and out of Greenwich easily.
I have a capital of 35,000 which I will use to open my cafi??. I will invest this money in the business rather than leaving it in the bank. The financial sources I got my capital were from, friends, family, and personal savings. My legal status will be a sole trader, where I will be responsible for the business, take all the profits, and I will be personally liable for all the debts in my business. I need to inform the Inland Revenue that I am a sole trader, within 3 months of opening my business. The products I will be providing in my cafi?? are organic products and non-organic products.
I will have freshly made organic sandwiches, with hot and cold beverages. As non-organic products I will offer pastries, cakes, muffins, cookies, soups and salads. This is a wide range of products to meet consumer tastes and preferences. I will be renting the premises, as I will not be able to afford the property. However, if my business is successful, I will consider purchasing the property as I will have enough finance to buy the property. My target market is aged 21-30 and within this age group it is targeted at students, men for sandwiches, women for coffee, and the ACORN profile of SE10 9BJ.
I chose to target my products at this target market mainly because, this age group tend to buy more sandwiches to eat healthy, drink coffee whilst studying, at teatime, work or even when socialising. To meet the needs of people that are health conscious about their diet, I will be providing organic sandwiches, salads, soups and many more in my cafe. My Unique Selling Point is providing both organic and non-organic products in my cafi??. From my research it can be said that there are not many organic cafes in Greenwich, which means there is likely to be less competition in the area.
Therefore, by providing organic food I hope to attract as many potential customers as possible. However, there is a risk that since there are not many organic cafes in Greenwich, there may not be much demand for organic food. Taking into account this risk, I will judge the trend of eating lifestyle in Greenwich that is; if there is more demand of organic products I will diversify my non-organic products into organic products. My cafi?? will be open the whole week that is the 7 days in the week. On weekdays it will be open from 7am-6.
30 pm and during the weekend it will be open 8am – 4pm. The main reason for having my cafi?? open at these times, is so that I can attract as many customers as possible and make it flexible for customers to visit at any time during the day. I will be employing 2 full time staff and 1 part time staff. They have a choice of the hours of work they wish to work. I will be promoting my business in three different ways, through local newspapers, local radio and leaflets. The total cost I will be spending will be on advertising is i?? 4200.
the main reason why I chose these promotions to advertise is so that I can create awareness of my cafi?? locally in Greenwich and this way I will be able to reach my target market. The pricing strategy I will be using is the cost-plus pricing that is I want a price made up of the cost of manufacture (overheads) plus a percentage mark-up for your profit. This pricing strategy will help mark up profit before coming up with a price for my products. Again with this pricing strategy it will help me cover production costs, to obtain a suitable profit for my business.
If revenue obtained does not exceed cost, this is likely to result in a loss. I may be able to sustain a loss for a while, but in order to continue operating my cafi?? , I must generate enough revenue to cover wage bills and other expenses. Justification of approach taken to complete business plan The first thing I did was to lay out a structure for my business idea. The main reason why I did this was, to find out if my business idea existed in the market and if it was a good enough idea before I opened my cafi.
To do this I had to collect information, thus I used a variety of resources. This included using internet, websites to collect information about transport links in Greenwich, the location, attractions which made the area popular, how competitive the area is. To get more detailed information I visited the libraries and the location where I was to open my cafi??. This helped me find out what the strengths, weaknesses of the area are, as well as opportunities and threats the location has. By analysing how competitive the area is, I will be able to decide what my cafi?? will have as a USP.
I visited cafes and analysed what their strengths and weaknesses are to get an idea of how I would target customers through my USP. The next thing I did was going to banks such as, Natwest, Barclays and Lloyds and got their start up pack to research on what needs to be considered when opening a business. Things such as rules and regulations, in what way the bank offers help, which ownership will be suitable and what financial records I needed. Thirdly I wanted to investigate if Greenwich was a suitable location for my business idea.
The purpose of doing this was, to investigate whether I should open my cafiin Greenwich, is there enough demand in the area that will help me attract potential customers, which in result will make my business idea successful. Again, I visited Greenwich to analyse how suitable the location was, how popular the area is, what attractions it has, and find out who my potential customers would be. At the same time I surveyed how close the Greenwich University was to the area, and if this would be a benefit to my business. I then had to work out the most suitable way of promoting my business in Greenwich in order to create awareness.
The main reason I wanted to promote my business was to reach out to my target market. I had a wide range of promotion to use, choose the most suitable and at the same time choose which would be appropriate to meet my budget demands and make sure it is not very costly. To do this I used the internet to calculate the most suitable advertising costs. I also prepared financial documents such as cash flow, a trading profit and loss account, a balance sheet, financial ratios and a break – even chart to see if it would break even. With the help of the financial records I will be able to analyse how effective my business is.
