Business Idea Assignment: Macaroon Bites

Question

Task: The objective of this individual assessment submission is to learn how to develop a business idea, complemented by brainstorming and leveraging the insights and skillsets of others. Assessment comprises two parts: Please submit a 5- page briefing paper of your business idea, its essential business model components, and aspects that will influence its success. A business model canvass can be included as an appendix.

Answer

Macaroon Bites: Catering to the ‘Sweet tooth’ of the customers in a healthy way, at competitive pricing

I. Introduction
Business development is referred to as the process or set of processes that involves implementation of the business idea or to make developments in the existing business organization. A good business idea helps the entrepreneurs to formulate some important steps that are essential to achieve the long and short-term goals of the business. The business plan in this business idea assignment will be developed to create and establish a dessert shop named “Macaroon Bites”, which will be located in Melbourne, Australia. This business idea assignment will discuss in details the business idea and innovations it will take up in order to succeed in the competitive market. It will also discuss the benefits of the business and feasibility of the plan for developing the dessert shop.

II. The problem
The idea is to develop and establish a dessert shop named “Macaroon Bites” in the popular city of Melbourne, Australia. Desserts are highly demanded in Australia, from gelato to pretzel-encrusted milkshakes, Australia is day-by-day becoming a “sweet paradise”. The demand for desserts is increasing in the continent, as seen in the statistics. The reports on the confectionary and chocolate manufacturing revealed that the sweet sector in the continent is very innovative and resilient as the people there willingly accept the products (Ibisworld.com.au, 2018). The demands of the customers are changing and they are in search of innovations. The reports also revealed that in the period of 2015-2020, the approximate rate at which the revenue will increase is 2.1 percent and the estimated profits are to be $593.2 million per annum (Service, 2018).

The dessert shop “Macaroon Bites” will posses many innovations apart from selling traditional desserts like cakes, pastries and ice creams. These innovations will attract more customers and ensure the business idea to be successful and this in turn will generate desired revenues. The shop will introduce a new concept of “live platted desserts”, which involves making and serving the desserts right in front of the guests. The main problem is the market is that the customers do not usually get such real time experiences and this will surely cater to attract more number of customers.

III. Benefits
The idea of the dessert shop named “Macaroon Bites”, has many benefits on its own. The shop will feature many innovative desserts apart from traditional cakes and pastries. The products that will be available in the shop include cakes, pastries, milkshakes, cake shakes, macaroons, freshly brewed coffee and fresh fruit smoothies. Apart from these traditional items, the shop will also sell customized desserts according to the demands of their customers at a reasonable price. The main innovation is “Live platted desserts” that is the desserts that are ordered by the customers will be prepared and served fresh right in front of them. The shop will use “molecular gastronomy technique” in order to impress the customers (Hyland, 2017). The prices of the products in the shop will be kept competitive (competitive pricing strategy will be used), which will ensure stability and maintain share in the local market and satisfy the customers to the highest possible levels. This will benefit the business by attracting more number of customers.

The customers in Australia are largely becoming conscious about their health. This will be another aspect that will be taken care of in the “Macaroon bites”. The shop will manufacture and sell gluten free and sugar free products (make use of safe artificial sweeteners to compensate it) to attract the health conscious customers. This will definitely benefit the idea and make the shop run successfully and profitably.

Most importantly, the demand for sweets and innovative desserts are increasing day by day in Australia. Thus, even though there are many other shops that sell the same, people will surely visit “Macaroon Bites” for its innovations and reasonable prices.

IV. Feasibility
Before making investments in a new business, its feasibility needs to be studied and evaluated properly to make sure that the idea is viable. The business idea in this case is to set up a dessert shop named “Macaroon Bites” in the city of Melbourne, Australia. The shop will be offering products like customized cakes, pastries, freshly brewed coffees, milkshakes, cake shakes, and macaroons. Many other deserts like ice creams, cookies will also be available. In Australia the demand for desserts is very high and is still increasing day-by-day, this makes the business idea to be feasible. The people are looking for new and innovative products and in this case, the “Macaroon Bites” will provide an innovative service of “Live platted desserts” to the customer, which is real-time experience and not usually offered by other businesses in the same field. This fact also makes the idea feasible.

There is a lot of competition in the market as many cake and dessert shops are already present in Melbourne that will provide tough competition, but the innovations that will be offered at this shop is not easily found in any other shops and thus it will be able to attract many customers. This fact makes the idea to be feasible. The pricing strategy that will be used at “Macaroon Bites” is competitive pricing and this will help it keep share in the local market and satisfy its customers. All these factors will collectively help the business to be feasible and run successfully over time.

V. Business model
Key partners: The key partners of Macaroon Bites are retail partnerships, which include the suppliers of raw materials, the providers of tools and equipments and others. A Graphic designer, who is responsible for designing the websites to make it attractive, caters, who are responsible to provide people with food during occasions and Suppliers of goods (Dijkman et al., 2015).

Key Activities: The key activities of the Macaroon Bites will be to introduce to the customers the idea of live platted desserts, to provide the customers a choice of customized cakes and desserts, to increase the sales by proper marketing strategies, the make the brand name famous. The shop also aims to serve the customers with innovative desserts developed by molecular gastronomy technique (França et al., 2017)

Value Propositions: The main value propositions of the Macaroon Bites include freshly baked cookies, cakes and other products, pre-packed products to serve them quickly them when ordered like muffins and cookies (the products will be fresh), to provide quick service and maintain high food quality which will be constant.

Customer Relationships:The Macaroon Bites plans to maintain good relationships with the customers so that they repeat their visits. This can be done by providing loyalty discounts to the customers, 24-7 chat support, running a product quality hotline and facilities of customized products.

Customer Segments: The customer segmentations of Macaroon Bites will be demographic. The shop mainly targets young people and children, like the students. However, tourists will also be a target for the shop. Melbourne is a famous city in Australia and is frequently visited by the tourists.

Key Resources:The key resources for Macaroon Bites will be using good quality raw materials, maintaining a skilled team, developing attractive websites, partners and a proper retail network.

Channels: The channels of Macaroon shops include on-call delivery, online delivery, physical store, social media page and website (Bocken et al., 2014).

Cost Structure: The cost structure involves raw materials, furniture, tools, equipments, employee salaries on which the business needs to invest.

Revenue Streams: The revenue of the Macaroon Bites will be generated by selling their products to the customers and various businesses.

VI. Critical success factors
The mission of the “Macaroon Bites” is to become one of the leading producers of irresistibly tasty, high quality innovative desserts in the world and provide tough competition to other businesses in the same field and put them at bay. The critical success factors are those factors that are responsible for achieving the mission of the business. The five key critical success factors involved in setting up and developing a business are strategic focus, people, operations, marketing and finances (Jeston, 2014). The strategic focus deals with proper planning, good leadership and good management. The plans needs to be properly formulated so that they help in running the business properly and help it to be successful. Proper leadership is required to guide the staffs to work properly and achieve the daily goals. To make this process easy Macaroon Bites will provide daily schedules to their staffs. The next critical success factor is the people involved in the business. The employees need to be trained properly in order to develop and brush their skills and so that they work hard. The employees also need to be motivated to keep them focussed.

The next factor is operation, which involves the processes that are carried on in the business in order to make it successful. The operations need to be performed properly to achieve the goals. The next factor is marketing, which is one of the most important and is done to make customers aware about the products and services available in the store. The last factor that needs to be considered is the finances that involve managing profits, assets and expenses. Macaroon Bites plans to generate the earliest return of capital in first few months of the operation of the business and thus will manage the finances accordingly.

VII. Conclusion
The business idea developed above in this business idea assignment is to set up and establish a dessert shop named “Macaroon Bites” in the busy city of Melbourne, Australia. This business idea assignment explains the current customer market situation in Australia related to desserts and sweets, which states the high demand for desserts. It also highlights the areas and the factors that will benefit the business to be developed and the important parts of the business model. Lastly, this business idea assignment will provide details about the feasibility of the business that makes the idea of developing a dessert shop meaningful.

References
Bocken, N. M., Short, S. W., Rana, P., & Evans, S. (2014). A literature and practice review to develop sustainable business model archetypes. Journal of cleaner production, 65, 42-56.

Dijkman, R. M., Sprenkels, B., Peeters, T., & Janssen, A. (2015). Business models for the Internet of Things. International Journal of Information Management, 35(6), 672-678.

França, C. L., Broman, G., Robèrt, K. H., Basile, G., & Trygg, L. (2017). An approach to business model innovation and design for strategic sustainable development. Journal of Cleaner Production, 140, 155-166.

Hyland, M. G. (2017). A Taste of the Current Protection Offered by Intellectual Property Law to Molecular Gastronomy. Cybaris®, 8(1), 7.

Ibisworld.com.au. (2018). Cake and Pastry Manufacturing – Australia Industry Report | IBISWorld. Retrieved from https://www.ibisworld.com.au/industry-trends/market-research-reports/manufacturing/food-product/cake-pastry-manufacturing.html

Jeston, J. (2014). Business process management. Routledge.

Service, G. (2018). Rise of the sweet stuff: Lessons from the dessert experts. Retrieved from https://www.gffoodservice.com.au/idea/rise-of-the-sweet-stuff-lessons-from-the-dessert-experts/

Appendix
Business Model Canvas