Starting Up A Restaurant | Business Plan

Starting Up A Restaurant | Business Plan It is noteworthy that the keys to run a successful restaurant lies in a stable economic base in the community and demographic characteristics compatible with the intended market. A well researched feasibility is required to obtain a loan from banks or other Non baking financial institutions. The economic base of a community can be beneficial to identify the potential for success, as well as help to determine the type(s) of restaurant that might succeed. A white-collar clientele needs are different from an industrial economic base. cultural backgrounds in the community may also affect the types of food preferred and consumption patterns. The prosperity of an area affects personal income. It help to find out a society by observing and contacting residents. The following questions help to evaluate whether a community is progressive and growing or whether development has become stagnant: There should be an area to assure comfortable seating and enough of a walkway for wait staff to move among tables. The outstanding space is for food preparation, storage, and office area. The food preparation area should provide an efficient movement of food from the kitchen to the dining room. The space should be arranged with everything only a few steps away from the cook, and should also allow two or more cooks to work side by side if warranted. Inside the restaurant, a separate area is usually reserved for dish washing and trash. The room needed for prep and steam tables, oven, grill and stove top, and small refrigerator and freezer, along with the exhaust fans needed for ventilation must be adequate. big refrigerators or walk-in coolers are used to store perishable items (Entrepreneur Magazine Group 1996, p. 40). In the restaurant we need some room for the washrooms. In restaurant you need the area for disable, male , female toilets. The external appearance of the restaurant is almost as important as the inside decor. Great advertising or even the best word of mouth endorsements cannot always compensate for lack of curb appeal. If the outside shows dirty windows, a dimly lit entrance, or an offensive sign, potential customers may turn away. The outside should be clean and inviting. If parking will be provided, the estimate is one spot for every three restaurant seats, with safe convenient access. Large restaurants must provide four percent of the first 100 parking spots for persons with disabilities and two percent of any additional parking. Once the conceptual framework is determined, the outcome should be recorded and saved in a form of a written manual. This written manual is more of a general description than a detailed plan. A description of the type of menu being planned should list the types and number of items for the following categories: breakfast, lunch, sandwiches, appetizers, soups, salads, entrees, side dishes, beverages, and desserts. Apart from location and menu, one of the most important aspect of a successful restaurant is the atmosphere or ambiance. The atmosphere along with the menu, should fit the type of restaurant (quick service, mid-scale, or upscale) determined by the market study. Customers will assess the atmosphere of the restaurant by the way it makes them feel. think about the following factors in creating a desired atmosphere: An investor must do a feasibility study to estimates the cost involved and the expected returns, before starting any form of business. unluckily, not all good ideas make great businesses, or even generate a steady revenue stream. A comprehensive checklist can be prepared to determine if an idea represents a genuine opportunity for starting a new business. The checklist should includes but not limited to that who the customers will be and where the business will be located. Restaurant are no dissimilar than other businesses in this respect. The idea or type of restaurant and the market the owner is trying to reach are often the first and main considerations. If a specific cultural food will be served, then the exact location and market must be evaluated. In order to have a footing in the market we have to analyze our long term opportunities and strengths. It can be done with a concept of total quality management with continuous improvement in the foods quality and sales by targeting the right market mix and segments. One important aspect is to understand the behaviour of the business market and types of the competitors in this sector. This can be attained by gathering information about the major players (who had captured the market) so that to identify their moves, strategies, strength and weaknesses. As the economy of the UK is hit hard by the financial crisis, the setting up a new business is challenging task; this means that areas and sectors like education, tourism and Industry will witness a large scale decline in the coming years. The current scenario required the government spending in some big projects like infrastructure, healthcare and education that in return can revive the economy and increase the demand of new business within the country. Researching and selecting Target Markets: We as a restaurant operator have to adopt a policy that is directed toward identifying the market size and potential in terms of demands related to the multi ethnic group within the regions. This means, that we have to target different community using a standard food Menu that can attract the customers accordingly. Next, we have to make decisions on types of Ethnic group that we should focus on by subdividing the market sector into smaller segments and assessing each one separately. Selection of the market segment is very important for positioning product. In our case it is advisable to target and select few niche markets comprising certain African and Asian ethnic groups within med-level salary ranges. The challenge would be providing them with the reasonable standard food with nice atmosphere at competitive rates. Designing Strategies and positioning our product: Once we have decided about the target market then the next step will be designing the strategies that match our long term objectives and goals. For this we can develop and deploy differentiation and positioning strategy. This can be done by providing a product that is different in term of quality and strength so as to capture the eye of the customers. After that we should position our product for middle niche market between large to medium level society. During this phase we have to consider that challenging market leaders in the very beginning would be difficult but we can exert extra efforts to be the market challenger or else become a market follower which is a strategy that fits us well during the initial stages of our operations. Planning Marketing programme After designing strategies we need to transform our strategies into programmes. This could be accomplished by making decisions on marketing expenditures, marketing mix and marketing allocation. As an entity we have to divide the marketing budget into the following elements of the market mix namely: Our product: We have to introduce our product with some differentiation and improved quality by acquiring good recipes, as well as, employing quality chef who can prepare quality food, allowing us differentiating our products from market. It is the product that needs to be marketed with due diligence so as to make the market feel your presence. And also tried to bring a new kind of recipe which is not available in the market before because that will make a plus point in your products and in your reputation. Price of the product: The Price of the product also plays some important role in its sales. At present, tough competition exists demanding the restaurant to sell their product at the right price. To price the product, initially one can consider quality and cost of production and companys mark up. Price valuation procedures like target pricing can be used to reach a point for price determination. In addition, to that idea of the market price for that product is also essential because one cannot set a price beyond the market norms unless that product is exceptional either in its quality or availability. Promotion: Promotion is vital tool for any product to promote our restaurant and its products (food items). The promotional mix / tools that could utilized may include: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Television à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Radio à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Newspaper à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Magazines à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Direct mail à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Yellow Pages à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Public transportation à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Billboards à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Internet home page à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Free-net in community à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Chamber of Commerce à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Visitors Bureau à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Convention Bureau à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Supporting non profit organizations à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Free press (if available in the community) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Community involvement Advertising: since it is a perishable item, due care is essential to market it using printed media that tend to be one of the reliable advertising tool. Sales force: for the same reasons above this promotional tool becomes very efficient effective. Delivery places (on time and at right place) Special Offers (like discount for parties and bulk Purchases etc.) Offering birthdays parties in your hotels so families can come and enjoy in restaurant decorate your restaurant for them and offer some kinds of kids boxes to the kids which can help in promotion of your restaurant. Organizing and implementing marketing programmes. It would be very cost effective to have the marketing philosophy built in and adopted by all working staff and employee at all levels. The marketing philosophy should be the primary component of the firms organizational culture to be reflected in firms and workers daily practices and performance. At higher levels the founders/ partners have large and more responsible role to play as they would be expected to market the firm among identified clients based on their relations the market. Monitoring the market process is the crucial activity where it will be needed to trace and find whether or not the programme is being executed correctly this includes controlling the expenses to ensure cost effectiveness as well as to ensure the execution of the programme is in line with the firms long term objectives. Suggestions for Success The customers perception of the restaurants concept is an important factor in success. Once the restaurant is open, quality feedback from customers is important. Does the concept need adjustment? Observe and talk with customers. What does the wait staff overhear? Are their tips good? Are certain menu items ordered more often than others? What menu items are left on the plate? Are the portions too large or too small? Consider carefully how the market you have created reacts to your concept. Repeat customers and word of mouth endorsements are priceless. The SBDC web site (http://www.commerce.state.il.us) provides the following list of 15 reasons why businesses fail: 1. Lack of experience 2. Lack of capital 3. Poor locations 4. Inventory 5. Equipment 6. Poor credit practices 7. Personal expenses 8. Premature expansion 9. Bad attitude 10. Too many expenses 11. Poor collections 12. Low sales 13. Inventory mismanagement 14. Competition 15. Crime Motivation for tourism: Push-pull factors Motivation for tourism: Push-pull factors Introduction The tourism industry is considered one of the largest and fastest growing industries in the world (Ninemeier Perdue, 2008; Cooper Hall, 2008). In the past few years many people have been travelling around the world for leisure, business and migratory purposes. Each individual traveler has different motive based on their needs, culture and lifestyle. A person needs give rise to motivations that forces them to act or behave in a specific way to satisfy the needs. Motivations are driven by the different force of push and pull factors that revolve around an individual which will reflect in both travel decision and behaviour. Therefore, it is important to understand the behavior of tourists, their backgrounds and what motivates them to travel as all ‘leisure involves a temporary escape of some kind’ (Leiper 1984: 249). The topic of this paper is based on trip in Langkawi and further understanding of what motivates the tourist to travel overseas and what sort of temporary es cape are they intending to find here on this island. The trip Based on recommendations by friends, a 4 day trip to Langkawi (LGK) was an ideal place to have a weekend getaway and enjoy the slow paced beach life. It was also a trip of escaping reality and in search of inspirations. Yet, while observing the local people here, there is more to this than just escaping reality and the slow paced life. Actually many of the locals have travelled here for holidays and vacations but ended up extending their stay for many months, some even love the life here so much that they became part of the local people and took up jobs in bars and opening up small businesses. It was the first time staying in a guesthouse and it felt like the whole atmosphere brought in by the friendly people helps open a person’s character and that atmosphere of good vibes seems to grow even more by mingling with people from different parts of the world, hearing their stories and gaining exposure of different lifestyles and culture. When travelling alone, one also gets to und erstand the importance of being alert to the surroundings in a foreign land especially when one does not speak the common tongue; it also helps that person to be independent by looking out for himself, adapting and abiding to different cultures, managing the money wisely and having clarity in life as one tends to drift into their own thoughts easily when not distracted by the daily routines. Lit review Getting away from the mundane life of the city or their hometown has always been in the minds of many people. Crompton (1979; 416) noted that the desire to ‘escape from a perceived mundane environment’ became a major motive of inducing tourist vacation behaviour. Escapism is described as a push factor, which refers to factors that predispose an individual to travel (Dann, 1977). In contrast to Riley (1988: 317), when an opportunity presents itself, people tend to be attracted to exotic places like an island where the beach helps them to relax and rejuvenate and have a temporary escape from the dullness and monotony of their everyday routine. ‘A certain picture is built up of a world that marks an escape from present reality an environment for acting out psychic needs, and the playing of certain roles that cannot be fulfilled at home, and it is this which forms part and parcel of tourists’ motivations’ (Dann, 1976: 22). So when a destination attraction consists of those elements of a â€Å"non-home† place, people are more motivated to travel there or even extend their stay. According to Backman et al. (1995) motivations are associated with individual basic needs for participating in activities that associate with their personal goals, being influence by their friends/family members or due to the change of weather. For instance, Westerners love travelling to Asia because of the exotic feeling, discovery of ancient history and warm weather. The need to see the unseen and know the unknown drives people to travel to new places and motivates them to visit new destinations (Venkatesh, 2006). But March Woodside (2005) also states that tourists are subjected to certain behaviour before, during and after travelling. These travel behaviours are mostly influence by external and internal factors. These could be explained using the Push-Pull motivation theory. Push factors are socio-psychological motivations that predispose, while the pull factors are those that attract a person to a specific destination when the decision to travel has been made (Oh et al., 1995). (Mehmetoglu, 2011) The ‘need’ to see things are the pull factors, Mehmetoglu’s model shows that these factors influence the tourist mindset of travelling. For instance, Image could be due to the sharing of photos through facebook and other social media platforms, Culture, for example Westerners at the age of 16 tends to be independent and they usually go on road trips after their collage and Price could be discounts given by accommodations or air flights at a particular destination. While the push factors are influenced by the socio-psychological mindset of that person. For example, the need to socialize or escape from their comfort zone pushes them to search for a better environment. Both of these factors lead to the length of stay for the tourist and it is controlled by ‘Control Variables’ which reflects on each individual tourist culture and background which not only determine the length of stay but also the destination. The control variables could also make tourist migrate to another country. Before the concept of migrating appear in a persons’ mind, the person has planned on a destination to escape from the reality of his/her hometown, travelling to places to relax. After being satisfied with the current place, the external and psychological factors such as better economic/social opportunities, safer environment for building a family, slower paced lifestyle and realization of their spirituality plays a part in concluding the migration or longer stay of the tourist. Methodology The research method for this essay would be considered qualitative because learning more about the culture and lifestyle of the locals requires more time, more analytical data of the surroundings and time. Therefore, the methodology for this research paper is based on observation and interaction with the local people. These observations and interactions were compared with the local people and some of the few tourists who came to stay for a short period of time. Taking down notes during observations will help to determine what happened and at the same time triggering an answer to any research question during data analysis (Bogdan Biklen, 2007; Pitney Parker, 2009). Data Analysis Findings While walking around the beach and streets of LGK, I manage to talk and find out that many of the locals were actually tourist before when travelling here for leisure but most of them ended up staying here as residents. Most of them came from Penang, Germany, KL, Thailand and even Brazil. Mostly, due to the slow paced lifestyle and their love for the beach, and better and nicer work environment which made them decide that they want to live here. I even talk to some of the tourists who travelled here for a few days ended up extending their stay for another day or so cause of the new friends they made. Discussion In order to predict travel behaviour it is important to understand how individual characteristics of a person interact with the characteristics of the situation, therefore understanding the positive and negative evaluative factors influencing destination choices of the tourists (March Woodside, 2006; Laws, 1995; Holloway, 2004). Using this guy called ‘Captain’ as an example, he says before coming to work here in LGK, he was a Malaysian who works as a security guard and he did not like the environment there and his salary could not justify his work. Back then he was eager for a getaway, a temporary escape of some kind. So travelling to places nearby like LGK would be a good idea as it is affordable, easy to distress and communicating with the locals is easy. (Pearce, 2005; Pearce Lee, 2005) came up with 14 core factors that describe travel motivation; they were built on items of interest from a rich array of previous studies and identified across the two large internati onal samples. The defining forces were in order of importance, novelty, escape/relax, relationship strengthening, autonomy, seeking nature, self development through involvement with hosts or the site, stimulation, self-development of a personal kind, relationship security (enjoying being with similar others), self-actualisation (getting a new life perspective), isolation, nostalgia, romance and recognition (prestige of travelling). (Pearce, 2005) Using the model above, the Travel Career Patterns (TCP) concept shows that tourists in the Core motive are unchanging because these standard and important motives are the common motivations that push people like ‘Captain’ who travel to LGK for temporary escape to just relax and bond with friends and family. Eventually, ‘Captain’ TCP developed into the Middle layer as he is satisfied with the environment that he is in and ended up building more bonds with the locals and gaining self actualisation and self enhancement by setting up a private inn business catering to backpackers and tourists. Some individuals like ‘Captain’ were push by escaping their life due to the political environment and individual background. Backing Pearce’s TCP model concept; McIntosh, Geoldner and Ritchie (1995) provides a deeper analysis of travel motives. Source: Yeong, Eves Scarles, (2004) Using the above table, McIntosh, Geoldner and Ritchie derived with 4 categories which travel motivators can be classified into. Physical motivators’ factors are those that push the individual to travel for his/her own purpose such as fulfilling a thrill of adventure, getting away from the hectic life and seeking a stress free environment. Cultural motivators are people who want to visit their heritage, ancestral site or travel to pilgrims in search for their faith to discover more about their religion. The third category, interpersonal motivators is about travelling with friends/family or a love one to build greater relationship and experience the destination together. Lastly, Status and Prestige are motivators that people travel for status, ego enhancement it is possibility due to an opportunity given to travel in a more prestige way and to impress their neighbours. Relating McIntosh, Goeldner and Ritchie’s theory and to Mehmetoglu’s model of push and pull factors. 2 siblings from Penang who work at a reggae bar along the street came here for leisure purposes. The brother is a cyclist who actively cycles with his group of friends around Malaysia twice every month. As what he said, it was a way of freeing his mind from his daily routines and his friends suggested going to LGK for a cycling session, group-based behaviour is a modification of individual behaviour, which makes individuals engage in activities they may not have done otherwise (Marcevova, 2011). Later on, he enjoyed living the island life and decided to carry on staying here and eventually, his sister and some of his friends came to LGK to stay and make a living here. Both the siblings and their friends decision was mostly based on social influence decision making and the pull factors of the destination. The political model of decision-making (Pettigrew, 1973; Pfeffer, 1 981) is an example of an adaptive form of decision-making, recognising the fact that most decisions are not individual but made in the context of groups, which means even backpackers or solo travellers make their decision based on recommendations, travel sites, stories based on past experience; all these are based on the context of group information and ideas that push them to travel. Social influences are processes which individuals adjust their feelings and behaviours towards someone who are perceived to be similar, desirable, or an expert in that discussion. Conclusion In conclusion, tourist motivation is seen as a multidimensional concept that explains tourist decision (McCabe, 2000) and each individual behaviours set different motivation of travelling due to different cultural background, country that they come from and the push and pull factors that influence them. In the modern world, technology is advancing such as social media being an intermediary to show people what the place has to offer and it needs to be considered as a factor of motivation. The destination that attracts the tourist plays an important role as well because the personal motives (push motives) and the view of the characteristics of the tourism destination (pull motives) determine perceptions (Bashar Aref Al-Haj, 2010) which could make tourists extend their stay or even bring in more people.