Business Plan Part 2
Entrepreneurship / Spring 22
Tzu-Chiao Hsu, Natalie Quintanilla, Amber Du, Kano Toyota
Table of Content
Marketing
Brand Positioning
Retail Strategy
Strategies, Programs, Platforms
Operation
Product and Service Development, Purchasing and Delivery
Geographical Location – Facilities, Improvements, Equipment, Technology
General Operations plans – hours, service, admin, staffing strategies
Insurance, Licenses, Regulatory and Legal Issues
Monthly, Annual Operating Calendars – key dates, events, seasons
Management
Organization Overview and Chart
Management, Roles, Responsibilities of Founders
Personnel, Staffing and Key Talent Strategies
Management, Team compensation plans
Investors, Supporting Professional Advisors, Vendors, Board Members
Key Team Member Biographies
Work Cited
Marketing
Brand Positioning
Retail Strategy
Strategies, Programs, Platforms
The strategy is not to cut prices but to raise prices to maximize profits from a wide range of price-sensitive, strong gourmet coffee-dependent customers, from the premium to the middle class. In doing so, they reinforce the premium image of their brand and products. The pricing strategy is one of the key factors leading to their great success. They formulate targeted price increases in order to capture the most willing customers and make them think of their products as affordable luxuries.
Operation
Product and Service Development, Purchasing and Delivery
Since we are a physical robot café, all customer purchase will be made in the store. As we are working automatically, every services we provide including ordering, purchasing, serving, and delivering will be provide through robot and AI system as well, for the most of time, it’s self-serving. For example, customer who enters our physical café will first finish their order and payment using self-ordering machine. Once they get their robot-made coffee in approximately 5 minutes, they can choose whether to dine-in or take-out. If they would like to dine-in, we also offer robot serving on the side table as an options. This is an innovative experience which we will recommend our customer to try out if they have chance to come to our store and eat here.
Our waiter/waitress robot has installed AI technology to collect, generate, and nevigate data sent from the core system. Once they capture the order data from the central system, they will begin serving orders to customer’s table. All the coffee and food will be served on a flat, horizontal tray held by robot arms, just like what a human waiter/waitress will do. Every robot waiter/waitress has a interactable screen which will display an digital emoji or faces as entertainment purposes, and with the AI technology installed inside robot’s CPU, our robot waiter/waitress are able to react and interact with the customer with simple questions regarding orders, service, chechout, etc.
↑ A Japanese restaurant robot
Store APP is the only payment method we provide, so we do not have e-commerce section on our website. When customer download and become our member on our Botfé app, they will get a personal QR code, which will be used as account and credit identification for their future purchases in our physical store. Also, once they had become our member, they will be receiving information and updates in a weekly basis, contents regarding store hours, products, service, new arrivals, promotions, and so on. They have the ability to turn off the automatic alart of those notification on their app, but it is designed as a default when they download the app the first time.
Our raw materials such as coffee beans will be sorted in our logistic and distribution center in Los Angeles, California, this is to ensure a short transportation time and less expenses on delivery from our logistic center to our physical store located in Los Angeles. Plus, most of our coffee beans will likely be exported overseas from South Africa, it’s better to have the distribution center and warehouse located nearby the port if Ocean Freight is our main shipping method, in this case, Los Angeles port would be a good location.
Geographical Location – Facilities, Improvements, Equipment, Technology
For our facilities, we are planning to start our first physical store location in Los Angeles, California, we want to be nearby financial districts and colleges since they are two of our main target markets. We would also like to have our future store location in Los Angeles shopping area as well so that we can appeal more young consumers who are likely to be consider group of people that have higher interests in the robot tech concept. Places that have high traffic of people are geographic locations here we are looking into because the more people passing by, the better chance they will walk into our store, in-store visuals is the key point of our robot café to attract first-time customers.
For our warehouse and distribution center, as we had mentioned in the last section, it will be in Los Angeles area nearby our physical store in order to reduce time spend on transportation.
Technology, as the core of our entire business, are robot and AI. We will have the latest robot barista and AI operating in our café to serve our customers. We are planning to either design our own robot barista or purchase it from other existing robotic
barista companies such as Briggo and Cafe X that is based in the US, or Crown Digital from Singapore. The above image is a robotic barista named “ELLA” designed by a Singapore robot company, Crown Digital.
Store equipments including self-ordering screen, coffee maker, espresso machine, latte machine, food service like refrigerator, supplies such as utensils, plates, cups, furnitures, store decoration, so on and so forth. Every equipment a normal café needs to have will consider a base, and above that, we are adding our own technological equipments of robot.
Since every order is paid using our store app, the transaction system associated with our app is crucial. We offer multiple payment methods that enable customer to choose their preferred way of paying. The most traditional way is to put in their credit information in their account as default payment method. Another way of paying that we offer for our customer is through third-party payment, this includes current most popular third-party payment processors like Paypal, Stripe, Klana, etc.
General Operations plans – hours, service, admin, staffing strategies
Our store runs 7 days a week, the operation hours will be from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the weekdays and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekends. Depending on the locations, there might be some time arrangement in the future, for example, 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. fits better in stores location near financial district and colleges since that’s closer to people’s working hours, and for stores located in shopping area will be opened at a later time in order to pair with other stores’ open hours. Since we are a fully automatic café, we do not need staff to serve our customer, we are planning to have one person in the back of the store, in case there’s an emergency happens in the store or the robot is accidentally shutdown and have to be fixed.
Insurance, Licenses, Regulatory and Legal Issues
We will have to register in the state of California and get a business license as well as permits from the state or county of Los Angeles in order to operate a small business and store in Los Angeles. We will have worker insurance covering legal, health, medical, etc. for our staff but just a few since we are not a staff-based cafe. Insurance, for the most part, will be covering property damage and store equipment damage. Music license will also be required to play music in a physical store locations.
Monthly, Annual Operating Calendars – key dates, events, seasons
Our operating calender will focus on summer and holiday season since that’s the time when people go out to shop, during that time, we will get higher demand due to the school break and holiday breaks. This means we will have to increase our coffee beans and food inventory in advance in order to be prepared. During the week of the International Coffee Day, which is on October 1st of each year, we will put on promotions and world coffee events, and releasing limited-time collection of coffee drinks. Also on National Robot Day (differes each year), we will have special robot performance in our stores to celebrate this holiday.
Management
Organization Overview and Chart
Management, Roles, Responsibilities of Founders
Personnel, Staffing and Key Talent Strategies
Management, Team compensation plans
Investors, Supporting Professional Advisors, Vendors, Board Members
Key Team Member Biographies
Organization Overview and Chart
Botfé is an entirely automated coffee shop where, instead of actual humans robots are making your coffee, the entire café will be completely automated, which means no baristas or cashiers will be present in the store. The four founders are highly skilled and well suited for this venture. The four members are all graduates of the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. We have extensive expertise in purchasing, marketing, product development, and evaluating our clients’ preferences.
Management, Roles, Responsibilities of Founders
There are critical duties to play to ensure that operations and development plans execute successfully. The founders’ duty will be to develop campaigns and brand conceptions and to pitch those concepts to managers, who will then present them to their teams. Another key function for the founders will be to maintain contact with investors and act as a coordinator between them and the company, it will also be our responsibility as founders to ensure that the firm runs smoothly and is depicted in the manner we want it to be.The manager in charge of the operations team will be the Director of operations; their role will be to ensure that the brand’s budget remains in good condition; they must ensure that the manufacturers are working well with us, that our technology is performing well and that deadlines are met; and they must keep in touch with both the product development and marketing teams to ensure everyone is consistent. The marketing team manager will be the contact marketing coordinator who ensures that everyone on the product development team keeps on track; they will also come up with ways for the brand to have a better return on investment in marketing. Additionally, we will have a manager who will serve as the influencer marketing coordinator, scouting talent to help advertise our company as it is essential to plan influencer complaints and negotiate a contract with influencers to help us get our brand out there. Finally, the product development team manager will serve as the product development coordinator, creating and maintaining the forecast trends that we require and can build around. They will also assist the operations team in locating manufacturers and vendors for the brand, as well as collaborate closely with the marketing coordinators to develop collection and campaign ideas.
Personnel, Staffing, and Key Talent Strategies
Personnel and staffing will be centered on three separate managers – managers of operation, marketing, and product development. The operations team will require a graphic designer; graphic designers are essential to these teams since they can apply layouts, help with the app developer needed for our company, and collaborate with marketing teams to ensure everything is effectively done. The operations team will require a service representative to manage consumer questions and issues. One of the most critical responsibilities in operation will be someone who manages the brand’s budget, assisting the manager in making the brand and investors pleased with the company’s financial side.The supply chain manager is another role required for the operations team; the supply chain manager will handle brand relations with all manufacturers and vendors. The marketing team will include social media strategists, campaign developers, and media analysts. The social media strategy will manage the company’s social media pages and guarantee that information is effectively published and suited for our customers. The campaign developer will create marketing concepts for our company and work alongside photographers to help build a vision to ensure the message is conveyed correctly. The media analyst will examine and enhance how digital media, such as email groups and social media, operate to the brand’s advantage. The influencer team will be those who are actively scouting for the company and coming up with ways to collaborate and negotiate deals for the influencer relationship, while the brand product development team will come up with ideas for the brand and scale vendors and manufacturers to help bring the new product to life
Management, Team Compensation Plans Staffing
Work Cited
Risa Kawaba. “Japan’s Skylark rolls out robo-waiters for contactless dining.” Oct 18, 2021. Nikkei Asia.
Christopher Albrecht. “A Global List of Robot Baristas for National and International Coffee Day.” Sep 29, 2021. Ottomate News.
Richter, Felix. “Infographic: Rise of the Robots.” Statista Infographics, 17 Nov. 2021, www.statista.com/chart/26210/operational-stock-of-industrial-robots/
