Final Business Plan
‘Food plaza.com’
MGS 607: Technology Management and E-Business
Semester: Fall 2010
Instructor: George Sanders

Table of Contents 1. Overview………………………………………………………………………………………3 1.1 Basic Model…………………………………………………………………………..3 1.2 Work flow…………………………………………………………………………….3 1.3 Extended features……………………………………………………………………4 2. Market Analysis………………………………………………………………………………5 2.1 Sales Distribution…………………………………………………………………….5 3. Industry Analysis……………………………………………………………………………..7 4. Marketing Strategy…………………………………………………………………………...7 5. Operations Strategy…………………………………………………………………………..8 6. Forecast and Financials……………………………………………………………………..10 7. Stages of Development………………………………………………………………………14 8. Funding Estimates…………………………………………………………………………..15 9. Website Prototype…………………………………………………………………………...16 10. Future Plans…………………………………………………………………………………20

1. Overview:
Foodplaza.com is a web site which will be first of its kind in the Indian market. The website offers customers a common platform to order food online and avail other services from a wide range of restaurants. It provides a better interface to the customers to know more about the range of restaurants where they can order from with a list of variety of food items along with the description and cost. It also provides an opportunity for small and medium restaurants to increase their visibility and customer base.
1.1 Basic Model:
Our web site will include search features based on the following criteria –
Location: (City, Local Area), Cuisine (Indian, Chinese, Vegetarian, Non-vegetarian, etc.), Restaurants and Price range.
The customer will have an option to create an account with our site where in his details like address, bank details and preferences will be stored so that he does not have to submit those details every time he places an order. Besides, the customer will have a full list of menu along with the details of each item for a number of restaurants in his locality. The customer can also add his comments about the kind of food he wants while placing an order. Once the customer places an order, we will offer him an option to pay online or on delivery. This will give an additional advantage to the customer to select any type of payment mode that he is comfortable with.
1.2 Work Flow: * Customer places order at Foodplaza.com * Message is sent to the restaurant. * Restaurant receives an order and immediately send the acknowledgement of order received * The restaurant prepares the order and delivers it to the customer location * Acknowledgement of delivery by the restaurant * Timely settlement of payment with the bank and the restaurants

1.3 Extended Features: * Functionality for making suggestions to a customer based on his order history and likings. * Option to book a table or plan a party through our website * Option to place Advertisement on our website which will also generate revenue for our company * Tie up with various banks where in there will be schemes for the preferred customers of the bank * User review section which will include feedback from customers about the restaurants.

2. Market Analysis:
We plan to launch our operations initially in 4 major cities – Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Delhi. We will have tie up with wide range of restaurants in the cities. The data from each restaurant includes - Menu, Description of each item listed on the menu, Picture (Optional), Price of each item, and approximate delivery time.
The table below gives an idea of the total number of restaurants in the four major cities where we are planning to provide the online food ordering service and the number we plan to target in the first phase.

City | Total Restaurants | Targeted | Mumbai | 3000 | 1500 | Delhi | 2700 | 1300 | Pune | 1300 | 700 | Bangalore | 2300 | 1000 |

2.1 Sales Distribution
As per various surveys and analysis, on an average the sales through phone order contributes to around 30% of the total sales and remaining 70% is in the restaurant itself. The chart below gives a pictorial distribution of sales.

As per our analysis, the total “Sales through order” is going to increase considering the busy lifestyle of people in metro cities. The percentage of people using the internet and the average time they spend on internet is increased tremendously.
We, thus, expect a good number of people visiting our website.
Also, there are many small restaurants which do not have access to a wide customer base as their visibility is low. These restaurants rely on mouth-to-mouth publicity for marketing. They do not have their own websites or any advertisements which will increase their customer base. Our website can provide exposure to such restaurants. If we tie up with such restaurants, we can list these restaurants on our web site and provide them much needed publicity.
After interacting with various customers and restaurant owners, we realized that the process of ordering food through phone is tedious for the restaurant owners as they have to provide each and every detail to the customer about the menu and prices and for the customers as they do not have an option to view the menu and compare prices while they are ordering.
Through our website we are able to cater to the problems mentioned above as a lot of overhead for the restaurant owners is reduced and customers will have a better interface to order food.

3. Industry Analysis:
Our current competitors are restaurants with their own websites for ordering food and phone orders. Potential competitors are websites like Burrp.com and Eveningflavours.com. These websites provide a detailed menu of various restaurants, but one cannot place an order from these sites. Since our idea can be easily replicated, these sites might incorporate the facility of ordering food and prove as a competition.

4. Marketing Strategy:

1. Pricing: * Restaurant owners will be charged a monthly fees ranging from $7 to $60 depending on the size of restaurants. * A commission of 3% of transaction amount will be charged by us and 2% will be attributed to the Bank. * Revenue will be generated from advertisements. 2. Customer Acquisition: * There will be no registration fees for restaurants in the initial phase of our business. * In order to tie-up with various restaurants, we will provide a demo of our website at various associations convincing the site’s usefulness to promote their business. * Customers will be given reward points and free meal coupons after placing a certain number of orders. * We will tie-up with various banks in order to offer special discounts to customers who have an account in these banks. 3. Promotion: * To promote our website and let people know about it, we will advertise through the following media: * Banks and travel websites * Outdoor advertising - banners, hoardings, electronic hoardings * Social networking sites – Facebook, Orkut, MySpace * Radio advertising * Print advertising – Newspapers, Flyers, Food Magazines etc 4. Lock-in: * We will offer special discounts to customers having an account with any of the banks that we have a tie-up with. * We will save order history and payment details such as Name, Card number, Bank details, Phone number, Address, etc. to enable faster transactions and reduce the overhead of re-entering the same data again and again for our customers. * We will create lock-in by offering reward points and free meal coupons for customers who will order frequently from our website.

5. Operations strategy: 1. Product Development: We will outsource the development our website. 2. Team Structure: We will have 3 teams: * Information Technology Team: This team will be responsible for data entry and maintenance. * Operations Team: The Operations team will carry out various customer acquisition, marketing and sales operations. * Customer Care: The Customer care unit will address customer queries and resolve customer issues.

3. Supply Components and Inputs: * Google Maps: We will use Google maps to search restaurants in the selected vicinity, the driving directions and travel time. * Local Municipal Corporations: We need to take inputs from the municipal corporations which will provide us with the details about restaurants and their ratings. * Local Web Sites: We will gather data from restaurants’ web sites to get menu and price details. * Inputs from Restaurants: For restaurants without their individual websites, we will collect menu and price details from the restaurant owners.

6. Forecasts and Financials:
The total cost incurred is divided into two types:
1. Start up costs-These are costs which are incurred in setting up of our business
2. Operational Costs-These are the costs which are incurred once are business is functional.
Given below is the distribution of our start up costs: A.START UP COSTS | | | | Task | Task Description | Investment amount in USD | Investment amount in Rupees | Percentage of Total | 1 | Website Development(outsourced) | 20000 | 1000000 | 47.61904762 | 2 | Advertising | 7000 | 350000 | 16.66666667 | 3 | Customer Acquisition | 5000 | 250000 | 11.9047619 | 5 | Equipment | 10000 | 500000 | 23.80952381 | | TOTAL | 42000 | 2100000 | |

From the above pie chart, it can be inferred that 47% of the total is devoted to website development which is the most critical task of our entire project.

B. Operational Costs PER MONTH | | | Task | Task Description | Investment amount in USD | Percentage of Total | 1 | Employees | 3000 | 36.14457831 | 2 | Website Maintenance | 1000 | 12.04819277 | 3 | Advertisement | 1000 | 15.38461538 | 4 | Equipment maintenance | 1000 | 15.38461538 | 5 | Rent | 2000 | 24.09638554 | 6 | Miscellaneous | 300 | 0.036144578 | | Total | 8300 | | | For 9 months | 74700 | |

So, the total start up cost and operational cost for a year sums up to $116700.
Revenue
The revenue that would be coming onto our business would be precisely due to two major factors:
1. Commission on transaction amount.
2. Monthly Fees from the restaurant.

1. Revenue from the commission per order placed:
The following are the calculations of the revenue from the commission per order per month. For Mumbai: | | Targeted restaurants in Mumbai=1500 | | | Daily Revenue generated for each restaurant through foodplaza.com=$10 | | | Total Monthly revenue from all restaurants=1500*10*30 = 450000 | | | Total Break up of commission: | Commission to the Bank=2% | Commission to Foodplaza.com=3% | | | 3% of 450000 = $13500 | | | | | 1.Mumbai | 2.Delhi | | | 3.Pune | 4.Bangalore | | | | 2. Revenue from Monthly Fees Calculations: For Mumbai | Monthly fees= $10 | | | | | Number of Restaurants in Mumbai=1500 | | | | Total Revenue=1500*10=15000 |
Hence, the total monthly revenue from monthly fees and commission=$47500 |
7. Stages of Development

Our entire business is spread across five main stages. They are as follows: 1. Initial Analysis: This stage is a our first and foremost stage which would begin in Jan 2011.In this stage we would be conducting an analysis on the market situation, come up with various important statistics related to our business, perform an industry analysis and identify our current and potential competitors and also analyze our customer base. 2. Website Development: This is the most critical task for us as our entire business is totally dependent on our website. We need a very strong and efficient website. For this purpose, we would be outsourcing our website development to an expert team and this process would start from Feb 2011. 3. Customer Acquisition: In order to acquire our customers better and faster, we would be having promotion campaigns in the form of advertisements and posters. We would also tie up with social networking websites like Face book and twitter to promote our business. This task would begin in April 2011. 4. Data Entry and Testing: In this task, we would be entering data into our large database which would maintain information about the restaurants, the addresses, menu etc. Hence, we need to build all that information into the database and also test, if it’s working as per the expected functionality. This task would take place in June 2011. 5. Launch and Enhancement: We are planning to launch our website in September 2011.In parallel we would also be working on the future enhancement of our business at this time.

8. Funding Estimates 1. The total investment needed for our project is $116700 for one year. 2. Out of this, we are planning to approach Angel Investors for 75% of the total investment. 3. We are planning to provide 25% owner ship to the investor. 4. 25% of the investment would be contributed by our executive team.

9. Website Prototype
The main orientation of our business is to provide customers with an ease of ordering food online. To provide this service to our customers, we will have to develop a website which will provide them with a variety of options e.g., sign up for an online food order placement service, order food online, maintain a history of orders made in past, store bank details for future transactions, etc.
The prototype of this website has been designed. Below are some diagrams to give you the basic look and feel of our website and what functions can be performed through various screens.
Home Screen: This shows how the Home Screen of our website ‘Food Plaza.Com’ will look like. Features included in this screen are listed below: * Search Panel: The search panel of our website will provide customers with an option to search on the basis of location, cuisine or restaurant. The customer is supposed to enter location details like street, city, state/province, etc. Our website will then provide a listing of the small, medium or large scale restaurants present in the vicinity of particular location. If a customer opts to search by cuisine, the customer will enter the type of cuisine he is looking for. The result will display several details like the restaurants serving that particular cuisine, the menu available in that particular cuisine, etc. If a customer opts to search by restaurant, the customer will get the menu of that particular restaurant in his area.

* Login/Sign Up Panel: The login or sign up panel of our website will provide customers with an option to set up a personalized account for their use. New customers will be provided with an option to sign up for the website and avail its services. The returning customers can directly sign in and perform various activities like search for some food or restaurants, view past history, view or change their bank account details, etc.

* Advertisements: Our website will also have some space reserved for the advertisements like promotional ads for various restaurants or dining places, New Coming up restaurants, any offers during festive seasons, etc. This is one of the several ways our company is planning to generate its revenues from.

* Item Of The Day: This is one of the extended features of our website. This panel will be used to show the ‘Item Of The Day’ i.e., any specialties for a particular day that any of the restaurants is providing.

* Book a Table: This is also an extended feature that our website will incorporate. This service will help customers to ‘Book a Table’ i.e., to reserve a table prior to their arrival to a particular restaurant.

* Plan a Party: This is an extended feature of our website. This will provide customers with an option to ‘Plan a Party’ at any of the restaurants which have collaborations with our company. This will provide customers with a wide number of options to choose from. They will able to choose the restaurant they want to have as a venue for their party, with the kind of theme they are planning to have. They can even choose the menu they want to have for their party.

* Customer Reviews: The ‘Customer Reviews’ panel of our website will provide customers with an option to see all the reviews that the customers have posted in the past; reviews about the website services, about the particular restaurants, their food menu, services offered by these restaurants, etc. The current customers have an option to post their reviews, if they are registered on our website.
Welcome User Screen

This shows how the Welcome User Screen of our website ‘Food Plaza.Com’ will look like.
The customers registered on our website will be able to see this screen as they log into their personal accounts to explore the various services provided by our website to the registered users. Features included in this screen are listed below: * Search Panel: The search panel of this screen will work in the same way as the search panel on the Home Screen.

* Past History Panel: The past history panel of this screen will provide customers with an option to review their past order history. Customers can review their past history of orders placed so that they can replace a particular order or change their address or bank details.

Menu Screen

This shows how the Menu Screen of our website ‘Food Plaza.Com’ will look like.
The customers registered on our website will be able to see this screen as they choose to view the menu of any particular restaurant or if they wish to see any particular type of cuisine. Features included in this screen are listed below: * Item: The item panel of this screen will display a list of all the items available in any particular restaurant or for any particular cuisine.

* Description: The description panel of this screen will show the detailed description of the items listed in the item panel.

* Price: The price panel of this screen will display the price of each item listed under the item panel.

* Add To Cart: The add to cart panel of this screen will provide customers with an option to add items to their order and pay for all items in the cart in a single transaction or in any way the customer wants to pay.
10. Future Plans
The company has done a strategic planning for future and has come up with certain important plans that it’s going to follow to increase its revenues and emerge as a market leader. Some of the future plans are as following: * Explore the market in the current cities: The company plans to further explore the market in the current cities i.e., Bangalore, Pune, Mumbai and build collaborations with as many restaurants as possible. * Charge a Registration fees to register on our web site: The Company is going to provide free registration for restaurants during the initial phase. Once the company establishes and forms a huge customer base, we will charge registration fees from restaurants. * Launch operation in other cities: The Company is also planning to expand into different cities. After generating sufficient revenue in the initial phase, the company will launch its operations in other cities like Hyderabad, National Capital Region (NCR), Kolkata and Ahmadabad. * Classification of food on the basis of its nutrient value: The Company has planned to classify its food items on the basis of nutrient value of each item. The customers can choose any food menu based on its nutrient value.