Strategic Plan, Part I: Conceptualizing a BusinessSusan Ayala BUS/475June 16, 2011Dr. Odell BrownStrategic Plan, Part I: Conceptualizing a Business Burgers and Pizza Restaurant Strategic Plan

Introduction

The following strategic plan is based on a fast food restaurant business. The franchise is concentrating on the fast food industry by delivering food products, which can be classified as fast foods. Among these food products that the restaurant will be optimizing on is the pizza. The restaurant is a fast food business in the local town that is specializing in fast food delicacies. The restaurant aims at delivering its products and services in the modest way that has never been experienced before in the town. With the best cooking techniques, packaging, product delivery and customer service in the industry, the restaurant takes pride in having a competent staff and affordable food prices. Considering that the local town is a busy locality, with a 24 hour economy, people are always busy and their lifestyles dictate that a quick stop at a fast food restaurant is unavoidable. In this perspective, people’s eating habits also change, and thus preferring fast foods. The restaurant highly perceives its customer’s health, as it is part of the business mission to provide healthy foods. In this perspective, the restaurant only makes food products that do not pose as a health risk to customers. For example, some of food products are not prepared through sugar additives and preservatives.

The following strategic plan is a framework of the business mission and vision, and its business values. The strategic plan also unveils how the business mission, vision and values are consistent with the strategic goals of the business. Moreover, this strategic plan offers an explanation on how customer needs will be evaluated as a means to achieving a competitive advantage.

Company Summary

Burgers and Pizza restaurant is a fast food restaurant that makes and sells pizza products. Some of the pizzas that the restaurant makes and sells include the cheese pizza, sauce pizza, Italian pizza, meat ball pizza and tomato pizzas. Other products, which encompasses the restaurant’s range of products includes fries and burgers. The restaurants target market is comprised of the youthful population, particularly the youths in college and the mid-age working class. The restaurant is operational 24 hours a day every day.

Company ownership

The restaurant operates as a family business owned jointly by David Charleston and his wife. The restaurant proprietors have employed 20 employees under various capacities.

Mission statement

Burgers and Pizza restaurant mission is to be the market leader in the fast food business in town. Burgers and Pizza restaurant will aim at revolutionizing the traditional belief that fast foods are unhealthy by making healthy fast food products, which are strictly nutritional. The restaurant aims at engaging with its customers at more interactive levels to optimize on health eating habits and good customer service.

Vision statement

Burgers and Pizza restaurant has the following vision to accomplish in the next five years. Burgers and Pizza restaurants aim to excel through market domination in providing high quality fast food products and services in the local market. To accumulate an annual profit margin of $50 million from its sales revenue and a clientele base not exceeding 10,000 customers for the next five years. In order to be a market leader and accommodate various customers’ preferences, Burgers and Pizza restaurant aims at gaining popularity by providing a range of pizza cuisines from diverse cultural origins.

Business values

The following will be the business values of the Burgers and Pizza restaurant, which will act as the guiding principles towards the achievement of the business objectives.

Integrity- The business will highly uphold to the virtue of honesty among the employees, its customers and business partners. The business will not tolerate dishonesty and fraudulent practices that are against the code of business ethics, particularly while dealing with its business partners like the suppliers. In addition, the business will use honesty while using marketing strategies like advertisements.

Responsibility- Burgers and Pizza restaurant will value its responsibility of providing to the community food products that are healthy and encourage healthy eating and living. In this perspective, the business will regularly have open education day for educating the community about fast foods. In addition, the business will make its products in a manner that does not pollute the environment through better and recyclable packaging.

Value- The business will only make and sell products that are of high quality. This will be maintained through maintenance of products quality, quality improvement and better pricing of products.

Human resource- The business employees will be the key to the success of the restaurant. This will be achieved through hiring of competent staff, respect of the employees, and better provision of a comfortable working environment.

Customer service- The business will rely on better and improved customer service as the key to having a competitive advantage over other industry key players.

Appropriate profits- Burgers and Pizza restaurant is a profit-making organization and such should always be upheld as the bottom-line of the business operations. However, the profit margin should be conscious and consistent with the business values.

Analysis on the organization’s strategic direction

Burgers and Pizza restaurant strategic direction is guided by the above vision and mission statements and business values. According to the vision statement, the business requires a financial target, which is projected under a scheduled time frame. However, these visions are to ensure that the business meets its ultimate mission or goal of dominating the fast food market in the region. In this context, a range of pizza products will be the restaurant’s menu and supplemented with other fast food products of similar nature. Since the market is diverse in terms of culture, several pizza cuisines and varieties will be made and sold by the restaurant.

The mission of the business is well consistent with the business vision and its values, and hence the success of the organization is not ambiguous or vague during the implementation of the strategic plan. This has been clarified by indicating the nature of the business, it products and the organization’s purpose of existence in the fast food industry.

The business values are principles through which the realization of the business objectives will be measured against. The mentioned values give the business a legitimacy to exist as a business organization that is not scrupulous, but is professionally driven. Observance of these business values will ensure consistency of operations towards one clear objective. Contradiction of the mentioned business jeopardizes the whole of the business strategic plan, thus the values acts as the guiding principles.

Addressing of customer needs and achievement of competitive advantage

Burgers and Pizza restaurant will continue to gather customer information on their opinion about customer service and products. This initiative will be carried out by the marketing team, which will devise various means to interact with customers. For example, an online marketing initiative will be initiated, where the business will use a corporate website and BlogSpot. In this perspective, customers will be able to order pizza products through online, and post their comments about the customer service and products of the organization. The business can also use a product delivery policy, where customers can instruct delivery of their products at their own convenience. Most requested customer needs will be met after a thorough market research and survey has been conducted, indicating that the product or service is the most sought by the customers. Customer outreach programs that include open education days will be of importance to encourage interaction and good relationship between the business and the customers.

An evaluation of customer needs will be used to devise new marketing strategies and production of new products that satisfies customers. In essence, this will be a strategy to achieve competitive advantage. In case the customer needs revolve around changing of products recipes or prices, the business will re-engineer its strategies to meet the customer demands. This means that the business will make products that are price sensitive or the business will improve their product delivery service.

Conclusion

Fast food industry is a very competitive line of business that requires a conscious business mission and vision. In this respect, the business strategic plan should be consistent with the achievement of the overall business goal. In addition, realization of the business ultimate goal is guided by business principles that respects ethics, appreciates diversity of culture, and are responsible in respect to employees, value and the surrounding community and environment. Nevertheless, the concept of customer service overrides all the business operation (Philips, & Gully, 2011), if the business seeks to have a competitive advantage in the respective industry.

References

Philips, J. & Gully, M., S. (2011). Organizational behavior: Tools for success. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.