Assignment 2b

Its been a while since i last posted anything on here but i will do a quick summary of what has gone on.

Beginning the Business proposal section of the module we had many different ideas for a company/service which would appeal to a post-consumer. These ranged from setting up an allotment to a 'Plant a tree' forest.
In the end we chose to create a business plan to set up an Eco Friendly Cafe in Dundee, as this is an area some of us knew a reasonable amount about the industry already.
We each took an area to research- i took up the role of researching running costs of a cafe.
I began by searching for any information which was readily available from other business models regarding running costs, rent, income, etc.
IN the second week, my role changed to research the price of internal appliances and equipment which would be required on the running of the cafe.
This included items such as coffee machines, fridges, cash register, furniture and crockery, cutlery.
Over the weeks we had to make decisions of what our company aims were.

We decided that our produce should be as local as feasibly possible.
That our products should be eco friendly, Fairtrade and organic.
That our cafe should appeal to all consumers, whilst having the ethos of a postconsumer business.

To decide what our cafe pricing and opening hours we researched other cafes in the area. We found that the majority of cafes were open 6 days a week and would normally have 2 or 3 employees on at a time. With regards to pricing our cafe, we looked at the what these other cafes were charging, adding a small premium due to all of the products being organic, Fairtrade, etc.
As all of the information of costings regarding food, drink, premises and equipment came through. I began to start a spreadsheet detailing all of the costs.
We also worked out the profits which could be made on a variety of available products to work out if the business plan was a viable one.
Mark up on most products was coming out at over 100% in most cases, telling us that this was a business which had the potential to be very lucrative.