Why We Need A Plan: Day 8
Banks require a business plan before loaning money to new start-up businesses. We will need money to purchase the food truck, inventory and operating expenses for the first few months.
In addition having a business plan helps us to focus our ideas in the right direction. It shows that we tried to think of all the possible senarios that would impact the success of our endeavor.
Executive Summary: Day 9
The purpose of this document is to secure a loan to start up a mobile food truck and catering service in the Tri-county areas :Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo counties. Initially we will focus on two fronts: a mobile food truck business at certain locations each day and catering events for companies: retirement parties, Christmas parties, birthday parties, and special events.
The population of Santa Barbara County is 424,000. The population of Ventura County is 823,000 and the population of San Luis Obispo County is 270,000. Since our market ranges in ages from children to senior citizens, we can consider almost all of these people as potential customers. Initially we will focus just on Santa Barbara County.
The employees of our company consist of the owner/CEO/food truck manager, food caterer/chef, a kitchen worker and window attendant.
The marketing mix consists of the following: Product: We will focus on sliders as our main product. They are easier to eat than traditional hamburgers. Cusomers can purchase one or more with fries and a drink. Place: We will focus on the waterfront area of Santa Barbara as where to locate our truck each day. Santa Barbara is a tourist town and many people frequent the waterfront: Stearns Wharf, the harbor, East and West Beach and an area called the funk zone. Special events occur often in the area: cruise ships arrive every few weeks, there are major events: fiesta, beach volleyball tournaments, breast cancer walks, Alzheimer's walks, and other charity events. Our mobile food truck can be driven to each event. Promotion: We will promote our business by creating a web page with shopping cart, photo gallery, event cost estimator and comments from satisified customers. We will also use social media to promote our business. Price We can offer competitive pricing over the restaurants in the area, since we do not have leases, utilities, property taxes, high overhead, and limited staffing.
Our financial projections show a break even at $26,961 per month. Our projected income for the first year look like $47,033.55. The projection assumes a 2% increase in food truck sales each month. Projected income for each month is as follows:
January: $5294.75
February: $6,149.48
March: $6,527.08
April: $7,811.84
May : $5,625.61
June: $12,072.49
SWOT: our strength lies in our flexibility to deliver numerous products to anywhere in the county without paying for a venue or reception hall. Our weakness is that some people still view catering trucks as those that serve substandard food and lack cleanliess. Opportunity : We can easily expand into other markets without any other additional investments: constructions sites and parking lots of major corporations in the area. Threats: It is relatively easy with only a small investment to enter the market and create competition for us.