Mobile Van Restaurant Company - Coursework Example

Inserts His/her Inserts Inserts Grade (27, 7, Mobile Van Restaurant Company Analysis Company description The idea for setting up a mobile van restaurant is to provide hassle free food for the customers and to sell any food item in a mobile van rather than a shop. One of the biggest advantages of the mobile van restaurant is that it does not require any rental cost. Moreover, the mobile van restaurant will not need any marketing cost as the van can itself advertise and since the van is movable, it can switch the business venue easily. The name of the mobile van restaurant suggested is Fastbite Inc. and the target group of our business would be the executives who belong to the white and the blue collar working class. The van would operate from 6 am in the morning to 10 pm and we will sell breakfast such as raffles near Singapore MRT station car park or central of Singapore. However, in the afternoon during 11 to 2 pm, we will sell lunch in areas such as Tuas, Loyang Way or Woodand while after 2-5pm, we will deliver orders to our customers. Mobile van restaurants were more commonly found in Somerset MRT and East Coast Park but there are many other areas where can be covered by us. Besides serving the areas where factories are located, we will also sell food in deserted areas because this is the place where food is not available and it is also easy to locate vans in these areas since they are movable. Therefore, we will also sell food in boon lay area forest which is the place where the soldiers are trained. Since nothing is available for the soldiers to eat, they will buy the food we will offer them so the risk will be low. However, in the cities there are many other restaurants and options available to the customers which would make it difficult for us to attract the customers. The population of Singapore is 4,740,737 and 77% of the population falls in the age group of 15 to 64 years of age. Singapore has a 92.5% of literacy rate and unemployment rate of 2.1% which means that most of the population is employed which means that none of the individual living in Singapore lives below poverty line and even the rate of inflation is just 2.8%.1 Business Operation and management We will sell ready packed food which will be prepared from a home based kitchen and the mobile van will be used for selling purpose only. We will require both physical and human capital which will be our key resources to operate the business. For the van, we will hire two individuals while for the kitchen, we will hire three people to cook, pack and receive orders. For the need of physical capital we will buy a van. Convenience is the main benefit that we aim to give to our customers which will also be our competitive edge. We did a break even analysis which showed that our business idea would work well. The Industry Data that we collected gave us all the information about mobile van restaurants and some of the possible risks include the external factors such as changes in any government policies or weather changes and to meet these, we will have a backup plan. Business features, functionality and benefits Some of the business features includes convenience we provide to our customers along with nutritious and well packed warm food. Our business would operate mainly on a mobile van on which we will sell our food items. Although we have competition around, we will develop product differentiation on the basis of branding, service and location. Our business will operate in monopolistic competition which means an imperfect competition in which the products are substitutes but will be sold by the competitors will only be differentiated on the basis of branding and service. For this, we conducted market analysis to know more about the industry and competition. Branding Fastbite Inc. is our suggested name which would include pastries, sandwiches and minced noodles while we will sell barbecue including sea food and chicken wings, beef noddle and Kway Teow, chicken noddles and rice, curry food, fried rice, mixed vegetable rice for lunch and for delivery we will include all these items along with a few more. The price would range from SGD (Singapore Dollar) 1 to 10. Location and service We will serve food in our mobile van restaurant to the white and blue collar working class mainly the working males belonging to the age group of 18 to 40 years of age and will locate our van in the forest for the soldiers and near offices. We will have a separate menu for the white and the blue collar working class and will serve food for breakfast and lunch while after lunch time, we will only provide home delivery. Our customer base will buy food from us because we will offer good quality food at economical rates in good packaging with convenience. Our direct competitors will be all the mobile van restaurants operating in Singapore especially in the areas in which we plan to sell while our indirect competitors will be all the other businesses that sell food in Singapore. However, we cannot undermine the mobile van restaurants operating currently since they already have a customer base. Therefore, to compete with them we have done research about the menu, hours and prices of our competitors. Normally, our competitors offer different menus every week while there are also some that have a special food item which they sell. The prices vary from one item to another and most of them operate during lunch time to service the office staff of various companies. To promote our restaurant, we will make our own website. We will opt for direct marketing and will send e-mails to our target market. Moreover, will also make a page on Facebook where will we put our menu and will also promote our page on other social media websites such as Twitter and LinkedIn. Initially we will also run a sales promotional strategy to encourage our target market to buy food from us and will give free samples of food too. Key resources The key resources which will be required to achieve the objective of the business are both physical and human capital. Since our mobile van restaurant business prospers, we will also provide many social and economic benefits to the society on the whole. Besides selling delicious and healthy food to our target market, we will also ensure to keep the environment around us clean and healthy. Moreover, business prosperity means increase in employment opportunities. Other than this, the business expansion will also increase the salaries of the employees which will serve as a motivational strategy for the employees who will then work with more dedication in the future. For every business, the commitment of the employees is an extremely important asset since the attitude of the employees is what can make or break a business. Happy employees always satisfy the customers and they contribute to the increase in sales. The employees and the vans are therefore our key resources which we will require. Learning points I have been assigned to write about company analysis which highlights business features, functionality, and benefits. It also identifies the key resources required to achieve the objective of the business. To complete this assignment I have studied about "monopolistic competition and product differentiation", for these I have the learning mentioned below. Monopolistic competition is also known as imperfect competition in which the businesses offering substitute products sell on the basis of branding. There are many unbranded food products which are already available in Singapore but there are also many branded food products. Branding is extremely important for any business since it creates product differentiation and it enables the customers to recognize a product from the many others which are available. On the basis of extensive research conducted about the mobile van restaurants currently operating in Singapore, we are sure enough that we will attain success. Therefore, with the success in business Fastbite will also increase the number of employees and more vans will also be purchased in future for which employees will be needed. There are many other future contributions that our mobile van restaurant will make to the society since we will practice corporate social responsibility and will pay back to the society by investing in various activities and charities. Besides this, I have also learned that product differentiation in economics is a term used to distinguish other products available in the market from our product and to make it more attractive to our target market. Work Cited CIA Factbook. (n.d.). Singapore. July 27th, 2011. Retrieved from: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sn.html Read More