Closing the Project

Project Title: Café Au Latte

NAME

College

Date of Authorization: 07.02.17

Project manager: NAME

Managers’ contact

Timeline: Start Date: 07. 02. 17 End Date: 08. 20. 17

Estimated cost of the project: $ 75,000

Project Proposal Form

Date: 2 Jul 17

Project Manager:

Name of Project: Café Au Latte

Project Sponsor: Owner

Project Classification:

______Compliance _____ Infrastructure __X__Strategic

What business problem does this project solve? Improve Café Au Latte brand image as a popular and authentic café in San Francisco, California.

How does this project align with our organizational strategy and support our mission and vision? Increase the sales traffic of the café.

What are the major deliverables of the project? Design Review, Tools and Equipment, and Proposal

What is the impact of not doing the project? Losing out on money and stakeholders

What are the 3 major risks for this project? Over Budget, Being Late, and Communication Breakdown

How is success of the project measured? Customer Satisfaction and Quality.

Will this project require:

Internal Resources ___X__Yes ______No Resources Available? __X__Yes _____No

External Resources __X___Yes ______No Resources Available? __X___Yes _____No

Estimated cost of the project (in USD) $ 75,000

Budget Breakdown (List large budget items and corresponding portion of the budget below – expand as needed):

1. Required Staff 2) Printed Promotional Material 3) Decor

Project Time Frame: Start Date: 07/ 02/ 2017 End Date: 08/25/2017

Estimated length of the project (days, months, or years) 2 months

Project Team (Add more lines as needed):

Name: Position on Team: Project Director

Name: Position on Team: Project and Event Planning Officer

Name: Position on Team: Project Manager

Brief statement of what will be accomplished in the project – what will be done/corrected/created, why, how, and what will be the measure for quality and completeness. This should be a few paragraphs in length but written concisely. Do not add filler sentences as this is a concise, to-the-point document.

Café Au Latte will offer its customers the best tasting coffee beverages in the area. This will be achieved by using high-quality ingredients and strictly following preparation guidelines. The café layout, menu listings and marketing activities will be focused on maximizing the sales of higher margin espresso drinks. Along with the espresso drinks, brewed coffee and teas, as well as some refreshment beverages, will be sold in the coffee bar. Java Culture will also offer its clients pastries, small salads and sandwiches. For the gourmet clientele that prefers to prepare its coffee at home, Café Au Latte will also be selling coffee beans.

Project Status: Approved: _______ Returned for Modification ________ Rejected _______

Signature (Student type your name): ______________________________________ Date: ________

Work Breakdown Structure for Café Au Latte Project

Prepared by: Date: 16 July 2017

Project Director: Josh Williams

Project and Event Planning Officer: Alicia Ann

Project Manager

Date 07.02.2017

1.0 SCHEDULING

1.1 Start period 07.02.2017

End period 08.20.2017

1.2 The team will first identify customers’ needs through the products and services offered to them.

1.3 The team will also gather customer feedback concerning the services provided by the café.

1.4 The project is estimated to use $75,000

2.0 RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

2.1 The firm main goal is to meet customers’ needs and therefore it will offer the client with the best coffee in San Francisco.

2.2 Creating customer awareness to the services offered.

2.3 Maximizing sales by a keen scrutiny on menu and strategic market strategies.

2.4 Establishing perfect relationship with companies that offer similar services and brands of coffee.

3.0 BUDGETING AND COST MANAGEMENT

3.1 The project is estimated to cost the firm 75,000 USD and the amount will be used as follows. The firm will purchase furniture that provides comfort to the customers while they enjoy their beverages.

Purchasing of products cost: $5, 000

3.2 The firm will also employ and train employees who will be serving the customers. The services delivered must of high quality and therefore qualified employees are required.

Payment of employees cost: $20, 000

3.3The café will also require renovation to ensure the clients are served in serene environment.

Café construction and renovation cost: 50, 000

Project scope statement

The project aims at setting up a café Au latte in San Francisco where it will attract many customers thus being able to maximize sales at a minimum cost. The project will mitigate the possible risk and create coffee beverage awareness in San Francisco and throughout California. For the project to be successful, it will provide customer feedback through issuing them with customer feedback cards where they will give their opinion concerning the services provided by the firm. The project will also involve the focus groups to anticipate the success of the project giving a sincere thought about the services delivered by the project.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP) for Café Au Latte

The project’s main objective is to provide main quality beverages to the large number of customers in San Francisco. The Café Au latte Shop will ensure that customers get a variety of best tasting coffee beverages around the targeted area. To achieve this, the company will ensure it uses a high-quality ingredients and following a professional recipe for all the beverages prepared.

The menu listings, layout of the store and marketing activities will all focus on increasing the sales of the espresso drinks that will have a higher margin. To complement the espresso drinks, there will be brewed tea and coffee and some additional refreshment that will help increase the customer turnout. All these products will be sold in the Café’s coffee bar. In addition, there will be small salads, pastries and sandwiches that the customers will find handy when ordering their favorite coffee beverages. For those customers that would prefer homemade coffee like the gourmet clientele, the company will offer coffee beans. The customers will be able to access menu offering alongside free magazines and books that they can read when inside the coffee café.

Café Au latte’s main menu will be developed around coffee drinks that are espresso-based. These beverages include mochas, lattes and cappuccinos. For each line of espresso drinks, the menu will include an offer with skimmed, whole or soy milk all of which are ‘shot’ of espresso based to help widen the market segment. The preparation of the products will be through forcing heated water through the ground coffee and creating a high pressure for pure products. The products will also be matched with additional additives to help boost the product quality.

Café Au Latte Project Risks

In completing a certain project of an organization, usually certain risks hinder the success of the project. This depends on the nature of the project, the time of completion, the competition experienced from similar firms and the cost to be used as from the budget. Therefore, before starting any given project, an organization should evaluate the gravity of the risks associated and seek to overcome them (Kim & Mauborgne, 1999). Several risks are experienced in setting up the Café Au Latte in San Francisco that could affect the project negatively. The risks associated with this project include inappropriate location of the café, which could lead to low sales volume, high cost of setting up the coffee and maintaining it that may result to high set back, unfavorable lease agreements for setting up the café in the selected location as well as competition from similar coffee cafes in the surrounding locations. These major risks associated with this project are well expounded and explained below.

To begin with, for any business organization to succeed well it must locate its business in a favorable location. This favorable location is where many individuals meet and do their activities together for example in a market place and towns. This will be a convenient place for it is near the customers and they will find it easy to enjoy the services of the café rather than when it is at far distance (Waxman, 2006). However, the location selected by the management of the Café Au Latte in San Francisco may be unfavorable financially since it at far distance from the densely populated markets and towns. Even though it is at a serene environment to the outskirts of the town, this will affect the success negatively. This is because the location will serve best for less individuals who are in holiday vacations and those who are not busy and have more time to enjoy. The individuals who are busy with other activities in town will find it hard to walk and enjoy the café services in this far distance and hence they will avoid it. This is a major risk since it will greatly affect the sales volume and profit of the business organization. Therefore, the management needs to consider appropriate location for maximum sales volume to the organization.

Beside this, the high cost of building an espresso workstation is another major risk associated with this project. This is because the building of an espresso workstation requires high capital and cost that may be above the estimated budget. This espresso workstation in as much as it will enhance customers’ comfort and attraction; it will be a risk for the organization. This is due to the high financial requirements for building high furniture, café outlook and necessary elements of the Café. This is a risk since the high cost used for the construction may lead to reducing other sectors provision in the estimated budget resulting to less performance as estimated (Kim & Mauborgne, 1999).

Nevertheless, unfavorable lease agreement and unfavorable competition from other coffee cafes is another major risk to the success of the project. This is because the unfavorable lease agreement in setting up the café may result to unexpected outcomes. For instance, the lease of the land to set up the coffee may come with various regulations that are not favorable (Waxman, 2006). The landowner may require high amount of money to lease or agree for the setting up of the coffee. In addition, other regulations such as fewer working hours in that location with high taxes may result to low profit and this is greater risk.

On the other hand, competition from other cafes is another major risk for the success of Café Au Latte project. Competition from such coffee organizations means that they will have to share the customers and the coffee organization with best competition strategies will serve more customers. Some cafes have various competitive advantages over others, as they are located within towns and market places; they have variety of services such as offering parking facilities, wide range of coffee and beverage product and services, selling their product and services at relatively low prices as they have high sales volume (Chen & Hu, 2010). This is a great risk to the Café Au Latte in San Francisco project and hence the management needs to improve on the competitive strategies in order to gain popularity and attract many customers.

More so, for Café Au Latte to overcome such risks and have high performance, several monitoring tools shall be used. These tools will monitor several elements of the project leading to some favorable methods of overcoming the risks. The elements that require high monitoring include budget allocation, customer interaction and feedback and competition strategy. Budget allocation is a tool to be used by the organization management to enhance good budgeting of the Café Au Latte in San Francisco (Yu & Fang, 2009). This will monitor all the allocations such that the funds allocated to various departments are utilized fully. This will regulate the reducing of funds for various activities and adding to others, something that may reduce the high performance estimated. This monitoring tool will serve for the best of each department. All the departments will have to account for the allocated resources as provided by this budget-monitoring tool.

Moreover, customer interaction and feedback tool will also serve to increase the success of Café Au Latte project. This tool will focus on the best service elements of the organization. This will include customers offering their feedback on the rating of the products and services of the café. This will also task the employees with responsibility of serving clients best. This monitoring tool will provide for customers’ feedbacks on how they were served by the respective employees. Employees will have to develop good and appropriate language to use when communicating to customers and this will enhance good interaction that will attract more customers. Competitive strategies on the other hand will be a tool that will serve to enhance appropriate competition with other cafes. This monitoring tool will establish various strategies that will be used to enhance healthy competition for example use of advertisement services to popularize the organization. This will help to improve the success of Café Au Latte project (Kim & Mauborgne, 1999).

However, technology-monitoring tool is another monitoring tool for the project but failed to stay within the scope of the project. This tool regulates the technological equipment used for the provision of products and services in Café Au Latte project. It failed due to the management unable to provide modern technology equipment and updating the older ones (Yu & Fang, 2009). This is because of high cost required to purchase the high technological equipment for use in the business organization.

References

Chen, P. T., & Hu, H. H. (2010). How determinant attributes of service quality influence customer-perceived value: an empirical investigation of the Australian coffee outlet industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 22(4), 535-551.

Chiralertpong, A., Acree, T. E., Barnard, J., & Siebert, K. J. (2008). Taste–odor integration in espresso coffee. Chemosensory Perception, 1(2), 147-152.

Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. (1999). Strategy, value innovation, and the knowledge economy. Sloan management review, 40(3), 41.

Morris, J. (2010). Making Italian espresso, making espresso Italian. Food and History, 8(2), 155-183.

Schwalbe, K. (2015). An Introduction to Project Management (5th ed.). Minneapolis, MN: Schwalbe Publishing.

Waxman, L. (2006). The coffee shop: Social and physical factors influencing place attachment. Journal of Interior Design, 31(3), 35-53.

Yu, H., & Fang, W. (2009). Relative impacts from product quality, service quality, and experience quality on customer perceived value and intention to shop for the coffee shop market. Total Quality Management, 20(11), 1273-1285.