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The Pickle Business: The Ups and Downs of an Entrepreneurial Business Venture
Student Organizer #5 - Plan Your Own Business
Have a brainstorming session to come up with an idea. Then choose one you can all agree to. Remember these brainstorming rules:
- Come up with as many ideas as possible
- Write down every idea.
- No idea is too wild. It's more productive to be wild than timid.
- There is to be no judging or evaluating of any ideas until all ideas are out on the table.
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Next, develop your business plan. It should include:
- Front Cover - the business, address, owner(s), and important officers
- Table of Contents
- Business Description/Summary -the product or service offered, its location, and target market.
- Start-Up Tasks and Timelines - identify the timeframe of necessary tasks; this should include acquiring or making the product, testing the product, marketing the product to potential customers or clients, etc.
- The Competition - others who are selling the same product or service
- Operating procedures - how you plan to run your business daily
- Personnel - all employees and their job descriptions
- Financial Data - Loan agreement (if any); list of needed equipment and supplies. Include an analysis of how long it will take for you to start making money based on the money that you make minus what you owe
- Income and cash flow projections - how much profit you will make and how much you will pay out over time
- Supplies - for example, technology, paper, etc.
Sample Business Plan
Below is an abbreviated business plan for a venture called BrownBagz. You can follow this outline, but you need not include every item, or you may think of others you would like to add.
Your business plan should be more detailed than this example, and should be approximately 2-3 pages in length.
Summary
Say what goods and/or services you will offer, who your main customers or clients will be, who will work in the business, and what their functions will be.
Example: BrownBagz will provide packed lunches for children, delivered to the elementary school each day. EL and LZ will plan weekly menus, take orders up to 8 p.m. the night before, and pack the lunches from 6 to 7 every morning.
Statement of Mission and Goals
What is the main purpose of your business? What are your goals?
Example: BrownBagz will provide enjoyable, nutritious lunches for children while relieving stress for busy parents. Our goals are to have a stable base of 30 orders per day in our first year and grow to 60 orders per day in Year 2, adding two additional staff.
Location
BrownBagz will operate out of the kitchen at EL's home.
Operation Procedures/Offerings
BrownBagz will offer three kinds of sandwich fillings and three types of bread; choice of an apple or a banana; and choice of cookies or a brownie for dessert. LZ and EL will make the sandwiches the night before and deliver the sandwiches to the students at their school each morning.
Note: Peanut butter sandwiches will be prepared last, after all other food is wrapped and packed. There will be no nuts in any breads or desserts.
Personnel:
EL - will be responsible for creating the menu, pricing the ingredients, and making the sandwiches, LZ - will be responsible for creation and maintenance of database, marketing to customers, and making the sandwiches.
Start-Up Tasks and Timeline:
Immediate
Develop menu
Price ingredients
Practice and time preparation
Test lunches on siblings
Late August/early September
- Set prices, menu
- Prepare order forms
- Put up flyers around town
- Set up display table at supermarket on weekend
- Sign up customers. create database
Great product, reliability; hard work, planning, organization, getting up early
Barriers to Success
Going to bed late; not getting up early; parents not purchasing our product.
Marketing Analysis and Plan
1. Market: Who Will Be Our Customers
Example: In our community, an increasing number of parents work. We often hear them say, "I hate making lunch in the morning." Many families would be willing and able to pay for the convenience of not having to make lunch.
2. The Competition
Example: Take-out places are the main competition, but they are expensive and people are embarrassed to always give their kids take-out.
Pricing and Money Issues
We will charge the price of the ingredients plus $2.50 per lunch. We estimate a price of approximately $4.00 per lunch. If we sell 20 sandwiches a week, after the price of ingredients we should gain a weekly profit of $50.
We will borrow from our parents to purchase initial ingredients. If we initially borrowed $30 from our parents to purchase the ingredients for our first week and we make a profit of $50 we can pay our parents $10, spend $30 on ingredients and still have a profit of $10. We will continue to pay our parents each week until we have repaid their $30 initial investment. After this money is paid back we can keep that money as part of our profits.
Supplies
Will use LZ's laptop to create the database of customers, ingredients, etc. A computer, printer and fax are available at EL's house.
Who We Need to Talk To
Our parents; the supermarket manager; the principal at the elementary school.
Legal Issues
None, as long as we're careful about the nuts.
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