Conceptualizing a Business Essay

Final Strategic Plan University of Phoenix BUS 475 May 16, 2010 Conceptualizing a Business The Shell House is an upscale public house which is known for the magnificent decor and upscale, high quality food. In definition, this type of pub style restaurant is called a gastro pub. The Shell House will be strategically placed along a river in central New Jersey and resemble the outside of a boathouse. Inside will house “shells” which are racing boats used to race on rivers for competition.

The long bar will be completely customized designed from an old vintage eight man racing shell, gutted and covered with restored with a see through counter top. The top will be a special mix of material to sustain cold surface to keep beverages, beer, and other drinks at a cold temperatures while guest are tending to long talks with their friends and families. The food will have a upscale, clean take on your everyday pub food. Presentation and freshness is key with all foods and snacks. Business, Products, and Customers: Mission Statement

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The Shell House is designed for a variety of guest including varying cultures, ethnicities, and religions all with the common goal of achieving relaxation, great atmosphere, and top notch food. The main competition for The Shell House will be other restaurant that are corporate owned such as Applebee’s, Chili’s, etc. These corporate driven restaurants although do not have healthful food selections, have the power to keep low prices and run non-stop specials to attract customers. The idea for the Shell House is to draw customers back into the realm of supporting local, small business restaurants that can give back to the community.

This is how The Shell House will create a niche for itself in the business market and become a huge competitor for the corporate giants. Throughout the menu creation process, the menu will consist of strategic dishes that are prepared from top quality ingredients where it can turn heads on your first visit. Just as an example, a staple dish of many pubs are the classic fish and chips. Most restaurants you go to today, serve you breaded piece of inexpensive cuts of mystery fish and serve it next to previously frozen French fries. My idea of fish and chips is a little different.

I would use a nice fresh cut of Haddock seasoned properly and make real chips from fresh potatoes. Those would be cut fresh daily or as needed. Just from doing this brings the level of taste through the roof. Buying fresh in bulk keeps the cost down tremendously. Organization Vision [pic]“A vision statement presents the business’s strategic intent that focuses the energies and resources of the company on achieving a desirable future”[pic] (Pearce & Robinson, 2009, p37). The vision of The Shell House is to ensure that each guest receives prompt, friendly, and professional service.

Maintaining a clean, comfortable, and fun environment for all guests and employees. To provide fair prices by using only quality ingredients to prepare great, clean food. To ensure all guests and employees are treated with respect and dignity they deserve along with thanking each guest for the opportunity to serve them. By ensuring that these objectives stay in line the assurance to secure a fair profit that will allow The Shell House to contribute to the community we serve. “Values are standards which we strive to achieve.

Values are practical habits that enable us as individuals to live, be successful and achieve happiness”[pic] (Pearce & Robinson, 2009, p45). The word value can be thought of as a standard that business’s try to set goals and constantly strive for. The Shell House values will do nothing but help the business achieve the mission and vision statements as stated above. In the mission statement it gives a description of the service it sets out to do and achieve. This process will reinforce any strategic planning process for the business. Guiding Principles: Culture, Social Responsibility, and Ethics

The Shell House will offer a food culture that will be surprisingly different to everyone at first but can become easily accustom to. For the rowing community this will be a nice place to go after their race or workout and talk about their events while still being surrounded by old rowing memorabilia. To new customers who never even heard about rowing, this can be educational as well as entertaining. Looking at some old photos and reading about how large the sport is, when it started, where, and how they can learn to row through their local boathouse.

The feel of being inside the Shell House would be a blend of an English Pub with the Collegiate Sport twist. Still keeping all decor very refined to match the quality of the food. To include social responsibility into the mix, this must have plans drawn up for continued contributions back to the community. Not only is The Shell House providing great service, great food, and great prices, the restaurant must establish and maintain contributions back to the community which also in turn provides great local advertisement for the business.

In other ways the Shell House can demonstrate social responsibility level are to treat every guest and employee with honesty and fairness at all times. This not only ensures the guest to become a return guest, but keeps your employees loyal to the Shell House and reduces the turnover rate. Organization Strategic Direction Strategic direction can be explained as the plans that are made or any actions that the business takes in the effort to help the business accomplish its given mission, vision, and other goals set in place.

When a business looks into its own visions, mission, and other values it allows the business to grow towards success. This creates a clear path for owners, managers, and employees to see what is expected of them to keep pushing the business towards the goals. When the Shell House defines the mission, visions, and certain values the business has established an action plan that will stick to the values while trying to achieves the goals and vision. Customer Needs and Competitive Advantage The Shell House vision for the business is to ensure guest satisfaction through a relaxed, comfortable, fun environment.

The idea is to make every guest feel like they are at home in a social environment and have our employees treat each guest as though they are close family. The overall mission is to run the business in a welcoming atmosphere regardless of race, gender, religion, etc. The Shell House will hold integrity and honesty levels to a maximum, no exceptions. All planning, objectives, and goals will play an enormous role in the restaurants strategic bearing and how the business will conduct themselves throughout the years.

A major part of the strategic planning process involves the constant review and comparison of the business vision and mission statement to check and see if the business has achieve or close to achieving its goals. It is wise that the Shell House uses a benchmark that is based upon the vision and mission statements to measure any decisions that are in need of being made is the right direction to go in. These decisions will finalize the right track and main reason of the business’s strategic direction. The Shell House’s mission is to ensure top quality product and services provided that can easily accommodate every individual.

The business will hold a high set of standards that will harness honesty and integrity in every thought and actions put forth in this business. The business wants every guest leaving feeling overly satisfied, but always wanting more from the Shell House and this feeling will keep guests coming back again and again. To keep a strong competitive advantage the Shell House will tailor a menu to suit a pub atmosphere. From traditional pub like food such as sausage and mash, fish and chips, juicy burgers, or something more expressive, the quality is of upmost importance.

Using only the freshest ingredients; at no time will frozen foods find its way into the kitchen. As far as suppliers, The Shell House will perform plenty of research to find local fresh ingredients along with calculating the freshness from travel time from farm to the plate. We want guests to know we have the best and serve nothing less. Behind the scenes in the kitchen for training chefs will undergo weekly courses to ensure they understand high standards and quality needs to be paramount. Training chefs will learn fundamentals of a successful menu with a strong, clear focus on what the guests want.

The guest will learn if interested of how the operations work. This shows them how much the business cares, how clean the business is, and how important each guest is to us. Also, the star player of it all for fun adventurous foodie’s, there will be a captain’s table place inside the kitchen. Where the guests can meet the chefs and can watch every step of the cooking process while dining and having drinks. The guest will also have the option to stand up and gain a quick lesson of cooking if wanted. SWOTT

The Shell House is a gastro pub focused upon good times and great food along with the great decor. The Shell House provides a variety of high quality products, friendly yet refined staff, and provides a completely different feel of relaxation for the guest. These products include the finest, freshest food that has the achievement of good old fun and great food is The Shell House’s focus. This SWOTT analysis that will be performed in relation to internal/external forces which are made up of economic, legal and regulatory, technological, innovation, strategic, structure, resources, and culture.

SWOTT Analysis In order to conduct a proper SWOTT, The Shell House will need to find answers to effective questions about strengths and weaknesses found within the analysis. The Shell House needs to assess what factors will contribute to a loss in sales and revenue. Once again, this needs to be considered from an internal and external perspective paying close attention to what the customer’s feelings are. The Shell house has strengths and weaknesses that were established in order to devise of plan to find any opportunity for the future status of the business.

After figuring out what assessments are needed for the business the questions that should be looked into are the current trends of food, drinks, and dining overall along with any opportunities that the business faces in the future what changes would be needed to ensure the business’s future existence. A good way for a business to find any opportunity is by looking at any weaknesses and figure out what opportunities might come about this weakness along with completing cancelling out any weakness. Finally, for SWOTT analysis, a business must look into any threats or existing problems.

Any threat can be found by looking into any obstacle that the business is facing or might be facing in the future. Threats can be made up of many different parts of the business world which can be restaurant competition, changes in style, technology, taste, financial weakness, etc. If the business overlooks the weakness it can easily damage the business if not taken proper precautions to protect against it. Economic The Shell House’s economic environment will consist of the availability to be accessed from all income levels. Being an affordable place to go all diverse guests can come and grow with the business.

The products, decor, and friendly, professional employees will ensure each guest receives nothing but the best treatment at fair prices. The restaurant will constantly strive to effort plans of changing menu items every season along with searching for private local beers for the guests to enjoy. The restaurant will be faced with nothing more than a large amount of weaknesses and threats from the economy that will have to be closely watched in order not take away the strength of the business. In today’s market, a clear weakness and major threat is the economy.

Day after day businesses are closing the doors due to this terrible economy. Some try their best and hang on to what they have; others may have been too late to understand what the economy has done to them. Even though this economy is not going so well, there are ways to devise new ideas to stay afloat and out of the credit crunch. A threat to the business is that the guests are tightly budgeted for money they have and might not want to spend money on lunch and dinners anymore. They might want to brown bag their lunch or stop at a fast food chain for quickness and inexpensive food.

Once this happens, there might be alternative solutions such try to do low cost, effective marketing in order to draw in guests and offer a quick lunch menu at a set price including a soft drink. This guarantee’s the guest a speedy lunch of good quality food at a straight forward rate that might be two dollars over the price of fast food meals. This would be a thought of an economic trend that can open the doors to a poor economy. Legal and Regulatory It is vital for The Shell House to discover the legal structure of the business is.

Based on the type of business structure The Shell House chooses, it will have a strong control over the strategy for purchases made compared to the products being served. The Shell House is going to be a sole proprietorship so the assets will be in control of the owner and the bank will be considered the only stakeholder. The only licenses that are vital towards the business profits are the liquor license. Which many of times is difficult to obtain if it does not come with the prior business. The Shell House will in fact need to certified “clean” from health inspectors, state inspectors, OSHA regulations have to be put into effect, etc.

When it comes to food handling it becomes a very difficult business if one does not know the proper steps of these safety features. A sales tax license will also be needed to sell food and beverages, also if the business decides to sell products such as a bottled special sauce to the guests. The Shell House will have to file for an “EIN” employer identification number from the treasury department. A strength that the restaurant can purchase is insurance for the business, employees, guests, etc. By obtaining insurance this allows total coverage to the business in the event of a catastrophe.

This ensures the protection the overall investment of the business. If the insurance is not in place then the business is at risk of being sued by an employee or a guest if something has happened, then losing its investment for starters. The Shell House will do its best to purchase a piece of property for the business rather than leasing a building. The idea of purchasing is the value of property; even in a difficult economy property is key. In case the business does not succeed or is in need of extra cash, there is always the property to sell to hopefully cover the losses from the business. Technological

Technology plays a small important role in a restaurant but makes a huge impact on marketing. The Shell House strength will be a technique used to draw in more business. On certain slow days each month, the executive or sous chef will be conducting classes on basic culinary techniques used in the restaurant, from basic knife skills to preparing and baking souffles. This is not just a class, this build guest relationship to ensure repeat business, and word of mouth advertisement which is great for business. Also, this gives back free culinary lessons and the importance of buying fresh, local ingredients to the community.

A weakness may be the lack of funding to purchase point of sale terminals for guest orders relayed to the kitchen and report gathering. Point of sale machines can be purchased used or leased if a business cannot afford to buy them. Innovation Innovation provides strengths that can only help the business focus on guest diversity that requires a diverse menu and beverages to accommodate all. The thought of expanded operations to other locations to offer the same quality products and service to guests far away would be great for business.

A potential weakness for innovation may be the difficulties of marketing the service and products available. If the marketing does offer unique products or service than it can become a threat by competition. Structure The best structural advantage the business can have is purchasing an existing building which saves a lot of start-up cost on having one built. Even though having one built you can ensure the quality and design it the way you want to. A previous building allows a structure to either leave the way it is or gut everything internal and redesign at a lower cost.

Plus if the building was a previous bar or restaurant it may have the liquor license included with the sale. The only way to ensure the quality of the work and safety for food and employees is to have plenty of inspectors and consultants to assist in the remodeling if an owner cannot handle the reconstruction on their own. Just like any business, everyday is a new adventure; something always needs fixing so the owners or managers need to be prepared. Strategy In order to run and operate a successful business a well thought out strategy must be in play. Not only to just run the business, but to work in long term objectives of expansion.

With the long term objective are made of short term objectives or steps to properly ensure the business is on the right path. Strategy has also a large role in the location of the restaurant. The idea is to be on lake, river, or Oceanside to give the overall boathouse feel along the river, but not too far from the center of town. The restaurant must be easily seen and carry a strong presence around the local community. Resources Resources consist of everything on hand that makes the restaurant run properly; owner, management, chefs, service staff, bus boys, dishwashers, tc. Employees can not only be strengths for the business, but can be weaknesses as well. Meaning, if an employee is not trained properly or for example someone constantly calls out of their shift it puts a damper on smooth operations. It is important to provide proper training and to keep employees happy in order to reduce the turnover rate. Some financial resources consist of the bank and the purchased property the restaurant sits on. Kitchen resources are its purveyors of the freshest, local ingredients that are vital in the restaurants survival.

Culture The very thought of The Shell House creating its own culture from its unique style and quality is something that will be reflected in each dish, each drink, and from all the staff that serve to our guests. Culture will force the business to stay aligned to its goals and strive for the best with no exceptions! A weakness that a economic culture can provide is the finances of the guests become scarce and the purveyors may increase their rates which makes it difficult for the business to keep reasonable costs to a minimum.

Balanced Scorecard The Shell House must create a specific practice that correlates with defining the restaurants mission and core values. This practice is considered to be a balanced scorecard. The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system used to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organizational performance against strategic goals. (BSCI 2010) | |

The Shell House must initiate practices into the daily and weekly life of the business and can show the business how to stay in the right direction towards any goals and visions and compared with the SWOTT analysis. Financial Perspective With financial perspectives The Shell House will need to evaluate and assess any increased revenues shown in net, minimizing product ordering to where there is just enough for the day or week, watch any assets used, guest satisfaction, and to be financially stable.

Ways to manage these perspectives are too closely watch the cost of operations, returns on interest or capital, and the growth of revenue. These should be watched and managed on a daily basis to ensure the business’s path to be clear and in the direction of success. Customer Value Perspective The Shell House is a unique gastro pub placed waterfront in town or very close to town where it is clearly visible and holds a strong presence within the town. Guest’s are the only reason why the business would do well so it is safe to say that each guest will decide the outcome for the business.

Guest satisfaction can show a market share rise along with achieving the service delivery of the products that correlate with the quality to everyone. The Shell House must hold a strong presence in the community by sponsorships or just getting the name out into the local market. Although the cost factor is there upfront, but the return will be a lot bigger if the cards are played correctly. The more the restaurant increases public awareness than the larger the profits will be and hopefully the guests are very happy with the overall deal they can become regulars and help out with word of mouth advertising.

The Shell House needs to make sure they achieve their objectives which can be done by creating and implementing tools that can determine the success rate of each goal. The restaurant can easily measure guest satisfaction by quick, to the point surveys, fun promotions that involves the guest, constant strive to find fresh local ingredients. It is obvious to come to the understanding that poor service, poor food, poor environment equals bad reviews from the guests and can lead to a quick disaster.

This is why it is vital for The Shell House to understand each guest and to view the restaurant qualities as the guest would. Two ways the business can promote more business through customers and that is one, to expand into other communities and two, make sure your food and service are top notch and affordable enough for the word to spread to other communities and the potential guests would make a special trip just to dine at The Shell House. Process and Internal Operations Perspective

The Shell House’s strategic goals should be created in such a way that promotes a collaboration of guest’s satisfaction and needs. The number one goal the business should keep above the rest is to keep the restaurant running at a smooth pace in regards to the guests and financially. This in turn leads to the business meeting up to the original vision and mission statement. Following that comes the strategic goals that are to improve process and efficiency, keep business options open, and constantly strive for peak marketing solutions.

The listed strategic points should be closely watched as much as possible in order to achieve the smooth pace wanted. As it was mentioned before, it is vital to create performance tools and reports to properly gauge any objectives used and goals to be met. Most important factor that can help keep smooth operations is the menu. Not repeating any products that can become boring, keeping a fresh seasonal menu with a few permanent dishes, and keeping a smaller menu selection to make it easy on the kitchen staff on busy nights. For guests waiting for twenty minutes for food sometimes feels like an hour.

In correlation to the menu, menu items from the kitchen view need to be ordered properly and portioned out properly. The chef would be in charge of figuring out how much product is needed to fulfill guests orders which means that just the right amount of product should be ordered, not to less where we would have to say no to a guest and not too much where the restaurant would be forced to serve old food or throw it away. Once this happens, the business will start to lose its grip with guests and sales will drop. Learning and Growth

The only way The Shell House can achieve this perspective of learning and growth is to always listen to what the guests are saying, order the best products, and always aim for that smooth restaurant pace. This is the ground work for the balance scorecard because it brings the restaurant back to the basics followed by some common sense. In order to stay true to the vision it is vital to properly hire and train the right individuals that the business owner knows this employee will brightly shine through the vision and uphold all core values through the peak service to guests.

Learning and growth should keep the restaurant young because it is always learning and creating new ideas to help guide and push the business into the right direction. With the owner, chef, employees always striving to learn more and quickly adapt to change is what the basis of success can be. All strategic objectives are to hire, train, and re-train service staff. The employees hired will not just be employees; the environment will be a family feel. Only the employees that want to learn, willing to improve on a daily basis, while making a decent amount of money will be allowed to stay on full time.

Only a highly skilled staff can properly move the business forward in any business. By keeping the family friendly feel between employees promotes happiness and with happiness lessens the amount of turnover rate. The Shell House has created a proper mission statement and vision that can do nothing but help this gastro pub be a success in hopes of plenty room for future expansion. One of the main focus’s to help guide this is to ensure the strategy be defined through effective communication between management and employees about the goals and vision.

To ensure these objectives are practiced daily the creation of a balanced scorecard can do nothing but help the situation and allow the owner to gain more control over the business. By gaining more control the owner can successfully see which direction the business is headed in and help steer the business back on the right track if it falls askew. Turns out this balanced scorecard will turn into a vital instrument to practice better business tactics in order to bring success. Communication Plan

In order to turn The Shell House from a simple vision to a newly running successful business there will have to be some serious strategies put into action. This strategy that is vital to the ongoing survival of the business is communications. This plan of communication needs to be devised from the owner then focused in from all employees and constantly reinforced to ensure the accuracy of the plan in accordance to the overall business operations. Communication not only improves business functionality between everyone but will bring complete organization to every obstacle it faces.

This plan will harness The Shell House’s mission and overall restaurant goals and objectives. Some possible ways The Shell House can uphold the communication strategy is by initiating team meetings that require all employees, managers, and owner to constantly remind and refocus everyone to follow the existing plan. Any changes of plan or constant reminder of objectives can be posted on a board around the employee area not visible to the public where employees are required to briefly read before starting their shift.

With the employees in complete understanding of the company objectives, vision, and goals this can be easily shared with the community to let everyone know the restaurant is trying hard to do its best to serve the public and be the best for the community. Customers can give feedback based on this knowledge and the restaurant makes any necessary changes. Because everyone plays an important role to the survival of the restaurant it is important to make sure they are recognized for the work they do.

This is not only someone who does and job and goes home, each employee works in and develops the strategic plan along the way. It is vital for the business to incorporate community participation to the strategic plan. Parts of a full-proof system The Shell House will have to pay close attention to is the mission statement, any surveys that were created to better the business, management views and ideas, meeting outcomes, advanced training for service staff and management.

The Shell House’s most challenging role will be to try and get the community involved with the restaurant affairs. By constantly spreading the name and investing in sponsorships and donations can keep a strong visible presence around the surrounding towns. Other strategies of rallying the community in favor of your business can be weekly or monthly newsletter either by mail or email. Email newsletters are really breaking ground because it saves a lot of paper, ink, and stamps and allows guests to follow the restaurants every move and take advantage of special perks offered.

The Shell House believes in pure value which means to show guests and all employees an honest work environment with high standards. High standard levels will show everyone that The Shell House is interested in nothing but the best for its guest and employees. Service training will consist of new ideas and concepts that allow employees to assist guests in making them feel at home and show them that every time they spend time at the Shell House it’s like being with family.

In order to achieve this at first, there will have to be numerous guest surveys and employee suggestions to keep on the right track. Not only does this allow the restaurant to ensure guest satisfaction but allows the restaurant to pick up on any new trends in today’s changing market. In the end, The Shell House must initiate an incredibly strong strategic plan that correlates with the restaurants vision and core values to allow for growth and possible expansion. Strategy planning plays a vital role in the success of any business.

There are important steps a business should take to ensure the plan is being followed the specific way to achieve success. The Shell House was able to develop a solid foundation by creating a vision and mission statement that can easily help future applications of growth. The concept is to create a new culture within the restaurant and share that with everyone that comes into the restaurant. Along with employee motivation and constant review of the vision and goals this performance measure alone can drive the restaurant into future success. |External Forces | | |Strength |Weakness |Opportunity |Threat |Trends | |Economic |Affordability |Guests may be on |Chance to provide a diverse|Guests no longer carry | | | | |budgets due to the |spectrum |disposable incomes. | | |Various product |economy. | | | | |offerings | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Very adaptable | | | | | |Technological |Culinary classes to |May need to lease POS |Make sure all opportunities|Competition levels from |Teach the | | |reach out to the |machines or buy used |are taken advantage of to |corporate chains that |importance of | | |community. |depending upon how |help the business change |keep low prices. |freshness. | | | |much start up cost is |with times. | | | | | |left. | | | |Innovation |Diverse customers |May be difficult to |Expansion and or |Need to be unique to keep| | | | |advertise properly. |franchising. |competition to a minimum. | | | |Array of products to | |Selling bottled products. | | | | |ensure guest | | | | | | |satisfaction. | | | | | |Internal Forces | | |Strength |Weakness |Opportunity |Threat |Trends | |Structures |Purchase building |Cannot design every |Can build additions for |Maintenance issues cover |Decor | | |rather than lease |aspect to the |more space in turn |costs on owner. Some | | | | |specifications |increased profits. |leases if damages the | | | | | | |landlord may repair. | |Resources | Staff, Food and |Employees not trained |Always search for the best |Guests may want change of| | | |Beverage Purveyors. |properly. |quality and freshest local |the look and feel and | | | | | |products. |move to other restaurants| | | | | | |for change. | | |Culture |Create own culture |Downfall on economy. |Expansion |May not meet all guest | | | |appealing to all. | |needs. | | Balanced Score Card Financial Perspective STRATEGIC •Market Share Increase •Boost Net revenues •Use of all assets •Lowering product cost •Obtain financial stabilization PERFORMANCE •Growth of Revenue •All costs of operations •Capital and interest returns TARGETS •Attempt to reach, hold, and increase from a 15% margin of profit •2 % increase of the market share over a couple of years. Customer Perspective STRATEGIC •Perform service and provide the best products •Grow visibility within the area •Show interest in all community events PERFORMANCE •Constant surveys and evaluations Awareness of Product TARGET •Strive for complete guest satisfaction. •At least 20% increase in guests over the next 3-4 years. GOALS •Future growth and expansion into other areas Internal Process STRATEGIC •Improve overall business •Improve marketing tactics PERFORMANCE •Reduce the amount of products used on menu. •Ensure guest satisfaction and overall employee satisfaction. TARGETS • 25% increase of guests •Strive to perfect food and service to lower the amount of returned food or drinks. GOALS •Initiate a new marketing design Learning & Growth Perspective STRATEGIC •Recruit, hire, and train the employees to do and be the best at what they do. Discover ways to keep employees happy and motivated. •Provide training seminars to coach on teamwork. PERFORMANCE •Lower employee turnover rate by properly training and finding a smooth work pace. • Guest Happiness. TARGET •110% effort from all employees, managers, chefs, owner. GOALS •Training on service, food, wine, drinks, etc. Reference Balanced Scorecard Institute (BSCI) (2010) Strategy Management Team. Retrieved May 16, 2010. http://www. balancedscorecard. org/BSCResources Pearce, J. A. II, & Robinson, R. B. (2009). Strategic management: Formulation, implementation, and control (11th ed. ). New York: McGraw-Hill. Retrieved May 16, 2010 ———————– Final Strategic Plan 10

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