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Running head: Business Plan 0

1.COMPANY DESCRIPTION 3

2.INDUSTRIAL ANALYSIS 3

3.MANAGEMENT PLAN 3

4.MARKET ANALYSIS 5

a.Demographics and Segmentation 5

b.Target Market 5

c.Market Need 6

d.Competition 6

5.PROPOSED MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE 7

6. MARKETING AND SALES PLAN 8

I. Company Offers 8

II. Marketing Materials 8

III. Referral Strategy 9

IV. Financial Projections 9

VI. Marketing Implementation 10

a.Marketing organization 10

b.Activities and responsibilities 10

7. OUTSOURCED FUNCTIONS 11

References 13

1. COMPANY DESCRIPTION

Hot Dog City is an upcoming family business in the second year of operation located in Washington DC in the USA. The company's aim is to provide quality products and services, as well as maintaining good customer relations. The organization deals in production and sale of readymade to eat food, particularly hot dogs. It also provides catering services for events.

1. INDUSTRIAL ANALYSIS

Industrial analysis as a tool enables a company to understand its position in comparison to other companies producing similar goods or services (Luther, 2011). Being in the food service industry, Hot Dog City is surrounded by many competing food businesses and thus needs to anticipate the market’s future trends and directions so that it can gain knowledge on how to maintain its market segment within the industry. It is important for Hot Dog City to understand its position in order to facilitate strategic planning. The business will be able to identify the opportunities and threats facing it, and also focus their resources on developing better capabilities that can lead to a competitive advantage.

1. MANAGEMENT PLAN

Management planning involves accessing a company’s goals and creating realistic plan of action for meeting those goals. The management plan takes into consideration both long and short term corporate strategies. The following are a few basic steps in management planning.

A. Establish goals. The first step in management planning is establishing company goals. Hot Dog City can for example set a goal of raising its profits by 30 percent over a one-year period. Having goals will push the company to put more effort in order to meet the set goals.

B. Identifying resources. The set goals should have financial and human resource projections linked with its completion. Hot Dog City should determine how many employees it will need to increase and the cost to meet the goal of increasing sales to 50 percent.

C. Prioritize tasks. The business will have to order objectives in terms of their importance. The major goal is to increase sales by 30 percent and the task associated with it is to increase the sales staff. Therefore, the company will have to complete the steps towards achieving the objective simultaneously.

D. Create assignments. As it prioritizes its steps for growth, the company must establish timelines to complete the associated tasks and assigning people to complete them. The abilities of the employees and the necessary time to complete the assignments should be taken into consideration. For example, the manager may be given the monthly earning quotas in order to track if the sales are increasing.

1. MARKET ANALYSIS

It includes quantities and qualitative assessment of the market. Hot Dog City should demonstrate its expertise in its particular market and the attractiveness of that market financially. Market analysis looks at the size of the market, the various customer segments, buying patterns and competition (Winston, Stevens, Sherwood, & Dunn, 2013). The following is the recommended plan.

1. Demographics and Segmentation

Since the business plan is to create a restaurant chain, they are to take a local approach to assess the market around them. The business should first identify the number of potential customers and the value of the market. It can achieve this by estimating it or buying a market research analysis. If competitors only focus on a single market segment, you may need to slice the market into different segments as you have direct and indirect competition.

1. Target Market

These are the customers that the business targets within its market. Hot Dog City targets customers that work downtown and seek a quick price conscious lunch. The business can either decide to be on the high end or the lower end of the market with its offerings. For example, value for money would be a driver for lower end market whereas prestige and customer satisfaction would be on the high end. Hot Dog City is targeting the lower end market segment within its immediate geographic area.

1. Market Need

It is important to know the market need in order to show the potential investors that you have intimate knowledge of your market. A business needs get the details of the drivers of demand for its products and services. For example, Hot Dog City is a food outlet. One of the major drivers for food is service. In addition, the quality of food one buys from this restaurant is a driver, but most people prefer the restaurant because of the good quick service provided by Hot Dog City.

1. Competition

This section gives a view of the businesses that are in competition with Hot Dog City. The idea is to analyze its competitors with a view towards finding their weaknesses that HDC can use to increase its market share of the lunch food dollars. Since one of the key drivers of demand that competitors cannot match is quick delivery of its food, HDC needs to invest in making the time from order to the customers hands as little as possible. It should make use of its competitor’s weaknesses as a tool to capture more market share.

1. PROPOSED MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE

An organizational structure explains how activities like coordination, supervision, and task allocation are directed towards achieving a company goals. Hot Dog City needs to be flexible, innovative, efficient and caring in order to achieve long term competitive advantage. The organizational structure provides the foundation of operating procedures and routine operational tasks. It also determines who participates in decision making process and how their views affect the company’s actions.

Hot Dog City should adopt a bureaucratic management structure. This kind of management has a certain degree of standardization and stresses on speed, precision, and lack of ambiguity. Roles and responsibilities of every employee from top to bottom should be clearly defined. For example, order takers should be limited to serving food and clearing of the tables. This will also lead to operational efficiency as the employees become professionals in their area of expertise.

The business should also establish a hierarchical structure of management ranging from senior executives to managers, all the way to the subordinate staff. Decision making should be passed from one level to another. Authority and information should flow from top to bottom, and the operational process should be closely monitored.

Another requirement of bureaucratic structure is respect for merit. This will help in putting strict subordination and reduction of friction from the staff. Respect is also expected for everyone working in the premises with high regard of top management and each employee should perform their duties with high level of professionalism.

These are the special deals that are put together to secure more customers and return lost customers back to you. Hot Dog City offers discounts to customers in the form of meal deals, daily specials and free food samplings. This creates motivation to try HDC food products and customer turn out increases as a result from these promotions. You also get to implement and test out new product offerings to see if they work. This will also create anticipation or buzz for new product offerings.

Hot Dog City marketing needs to be examined in order to promote the business to current and prospective customers. The business depends on printed menus with coupons as its main marketing platform to reach out to the customers. This material alone is not enough therefore the business needs something more like a website and social media access to its customers. A website is accessible and gives a platform for clients to provide their feedback and opinions. It also gives a chance for the business to market itself online thus gaining more attention from its customer base.

A strong referral program can revolutionize the firm’s success (Luther, 2011). For example, if each customer refers a new customer, the customer base would grow constantly. The business can, when it asks customers for referrals, give rewards. Frequent dining and referral bonuses will cost food only and create new and repeat business. In addition, you build customer demand since customers will look forward to obtaining rewards and try to hit levels. They will also frequent your establishment more, as well.

The management has clear outline of the promotional expenses they expect to incur and the expected results in terms of sales, new customers and profits. Since the company goal is to gain a 30 percent gross profit margin, it has its complete financial projections necessary to order to achieve that goal. The projections may not be entirely accurate but they are used to identify the promotional expenses and the costs associated with other strategies that will give the highest return on investment.

1. Marketing organization

Because Hot Dog City’s current and future product offerings will require some modification in operations, it is necessary to organize the marketing function by customer groups. This will allow the company to focus its marketing efforts on the needs and specifications of the target customer segment and help to identify the product offerings that will be desired by its customers. Hot Dog City has organized its marketing efforts into the production group, the business to business group, and consumer product licensing group. Each group will have sales manager as the head who controls the management and marketing to help promote catering events and identify and build new locations.

1. Activities and responsibilities

All implementation activities should begin at the start of the next financial year. Some of Hot Dog City’s president’s responsibilities include delegating and monitoring the following tasks and objectives:

1. By April, develop a marketing information system to monitor customer order and reorder patterns, as well as measure customer satisfaction. The sales manager is responsible.

2. By May, develop new product offerings and advertise and promote them to existing customers and potential customers. The business analysis team is responsible.

3. By September, implement a customer satisfaction survey to find out the number customers who repeat and in what frequency since the begin of the financial year. The marketing director is responsible.

Outsourcing is a business practice that companies use to reduce costs and improve efficiency by shifting tasks and jobs to contracted persons for a specific period (Bragg, 2006). Since Hot Dog City has no expert in IT, it had to hire an expert to handle the task of designing a website for the business as well refining its cash register and information system. This will cost less for the business than employing a fulltime employee.

Another outsourced function is tax preparation. A trained accountant prepares the company’s tax returns having been given the pertinent financial records. However, it is necessary that the company is selective in with whom it entrusts with such responsibilities in order to avoid errors that could lead to serious penalties and interest costs. Outsourcing makes meeting such filing deadlines much easier as it reduces employee work load and increases improved output.

Winston, W., Stevens, R., Sherwood, P., & Dunn, J. (2013). Market Analysis (1st ed.). Florence: Taylor and Francis.

Luther, W. (2011). The marketing plan (1st ed.). New York: AMACOM.

Bragg, S. (2006). Outsourcing (1st ed.). New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.