Reflective Essay On Vegan Daddy Business Plan.

You are required to prepare an individual reflection of 1500 words. You are expected to critically evaluate your self-development, examine your strengths and discuss where you feel that the business plan assignment highlighted areas that could be developed. There should be a particular focus on the skills that are important for your employability.

Write a persuasive business plan, work effectively in a team and practice key employability skills.

Engage in a critical evaluation of their own self-development and develop an awareness of and engagement with the Personal Development Plan.

The assessment criteria for this assessment are as follows:

• Enquiry and use of sources
• Knowledge and understanding of subject matter
• Critical judgement and analytical ability

The practise of veganism is a growing trend nowadays. People who are more concerned about the health go for vegan eating than opting non-vegetarian food items. In fact, health issues like obesity are increasing in a chronic manner that pushes people to switch in vegan eating (Ingenbleek, Meulenberg and Van Trijp 2015). Therefore, this reflective essay is highlighting the business plan of Vegan Daddy restaurants who are selling only vegan food products in Croydon, England. In course of the reflection, various attributes of the business plan will be come up which are effectively help Vegan Daddy to sustain in the competitive market.

As a marketing expert working in the Vegan Daddy restaurants my job is to figure out the possible loopholes and strengths which can be manipulated in order to achieve more success for the company in near future. In doing my job I had faced a number of obstacles. The obstacles were identified while mapping the target customers or in case of understanding the role of innovation in organisational framework.

Therefore, before setting out a well developed business plan it is my responsibility to get a glimpse of the aims and objectives of Vegan Daddy. Alike all the other companies Vegan Daddy also follows some fundamental objectives such as betterment of the product and services and capitalise the market as far as it is possible. These objectives led me towards understanding the demography and target customers of the restaurants. As a marketing manager I had a limited idea about the paradigm of demography and target customers. However, my erstwhile experiences had restricted to small enterprises where the demographic aspect was not so dynamic. Therefore, after joining Vegan Daddy as a marketing manager I came to know about different approaches and ideas of customer demography which in future would help me to get a clearer perception of the techniques. In this context, the company has a strategic location in Croydon where .8% people purely vegan and 1.3% are fond of vegan foods highly (Frawley and Dyson 2014). Despite of these poor facts there are also some silver linings which can prove the future value of this business. In fact, empirical evidences opined that veganism has a bright future in Croydon and the predictable shift from non-vegetarians to vegan is greatly popularised in this region. Furthermore, in the UK food market meatless food items witnesses a booming trend that the vegan food market sales touched the record sales figure of £657 million in 2014. Despite of it, threat elements like costs of raw materials of food products created an obstacle in keeping pace with rapidly increasing inflation. Besides this, competitiveness in market is always posed a significant threat for any company irrespective of its size (Galliers and Leidner 2014). In this context, as a marketing expert it is my responsibility to figure out the possible threats and opportunities regarding marketing occupation of Vegan Daddy. However, as a vegan I have some idea about the preferences and dislikes of the Vegan customers and in my opinion it would give me an advantage in creating a business plan.

Marketing Strategy

In response to the growing threat in market segments and in economy as a marketing manager my job is to collect data as much as possible and to estimate a plan for dealing with the challenges. In this scenario, the data collection process will be generated through a double step research process. It can be argued that data collection is a necessary step for constructing a business plan. There are ample of approaches that can be followed in collecting data. I had some previous experience in dealing with primary data only. Analysing the secondary data was a new concept to me that I had learned in Vegan Daddy. In this context, there are some disadvantages of using secondary data. The secondary data contains a gross reflection of the theme. It is the credibility and skill of the person to extract the relevant information. Therefore, there is always a possibility to overlook the important data. In my case, there was a possibility of getting misinformation but in course of time I got to know about prioritisation of data. The first step will be relied upon the primary market research in which street surveys and sample surveys are considered to be an essential part (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault 2015). On the other hand the second phase is comprised with the secondary sources in form of internet and related magazines and articles. In fact, a data collection process had been initiated to understand the vegan market and its future which pointed out that there is a blooming exposure for the demand of vegan food products in UK but at the same time the competitiveness can be produced threat for Vegan Daddy. Therefore, innovative food menus with comfortable venues are pivotal for the Vegan Daddy. Proper advertisement should be done through verbal transmission or digital footages. Handbill or leaflets are also supposed to be a good initiative for attracting more customers in the Vegan Daddy restaurants (Boddy 2016).

For creating a proper marketing plan I chose a six months planning procedure which includes all the necessary steps that will be activated during this tenure. The marketing plan of Vegan Daddy was too prolong and strenuous for inexperienced people like me. It requires a great deal of concentration and understanding of the entire procedure. In order to create a six months marketing planning I came to know about these risk factors and in accordance had set a decision making plan for myself. This self assessment in return helped me to prioritize my steps in future. The first month would put focus on opening the brand new outlet in Croydon. It was further associated with a number of other staffs such as planning a marketing strategy with a creative concept. Preparation of a marketing message and press release requirements were also taken into consideration. The next month would be dedicated to the promotional measures and mechanism. It was encapsulated with free lunch strategy and banners, posters media promotion had also put a great influence into the promotional strategy. Furthermore, relying on the customer responses we were going to introduce a restaurant app and sending out the QR codes to our customers. Social media had been played a pivotal role in this regards. The next thing was accompanied with creating and enhancing a brand image. For this purpose I suggested to organise some events on importance of veganism. Local schools and colleges were our target for convincing the young generation about the advantages of vegan food products. It was supposed to be beneficial for Vegan Daddy to attract the young customers and capitalised the market more.

Market segmentation

The marketing strategy was further accompanied with a marketing mix tool. There are two types of marketing mix strategies like 4Ps and 7Ps planning (Armstrong et al. 2014). In this context we chose the 4P marketing mix strategy. It contains a detailed analysis of product, price, promotion and place (Khan 2014). Therefore, in case of Vegan Daddy, the restaurant is looking for food service efficiency where a proper mannerism will be practised while dealing with the customers. It seems like Vegan Daddy is ought to focus on its service facilities in a concerned approach. In addition to this, the pricing strategy also plays a very significant role in procuring a solid marketing plan. Vegan Daddy maintains a cheap pricing strategy with quality items and services. Besides this, the company takes a great interest in its repeat customer trend. The prevalence of customer repetition symbolises the brand value or popularity of a company that Vegan Daddy is going to inculcate in its market orientation. Healthy menu options with a sober and clean restaurant environment is considered to be key characteristics of Vegan Daddy that will keep the company running in a high competitive market. The local community is on the primary target of the company because it ushers a great deal of regular customers. In this regards, the decent and healthy meals free from animal by-products create a positive perception about the company and its service. In order to set a promotional strategy, Vegan Daddy is going to follow the in-house promotion in the first year. It includes brochures, menus highlighted with nutrition value, graffiti and posters and flyers. Moreover, free lunch day, free advertising, media promotions are also considered to be a part of the promotion plan. Geographical location also delivers a significant impact on company’s success. Hence, the Vegan Daddy has opened their outlet in the shopping centre in Boxpark, Croydon. Due to this strategic location the Vegan Daddy is able attract customers and in return yields high profit.

At the same time, it is imperative for Vegan Daddy to formulate its market segmentation. Market segmentation is identified as a practice through which the company categorises its different genre of target customers (Brito et al. 2015). In case of the Vegan Daddy, the market segmentation is primarily focused on the families and customers of both male and female genders. The probable target customers will be of age between 25 and 65. However, it is important for the restaurant to get an idea of the psychology and behaviour of the potential customer. There are some process through which we can get a clear picture of the demands and requirements of the vegan consumers. It can be argued that the survey is the best option for getting the complete understanding of consumer behaviour. However, in case of Vegan Daddy the survey process was supposed to be difficult. The reason behind this hardship was the lack of giving reviews and responses from the side of the customers. Most of the time, they were not willing to give any response and wanted to skip it. As a result of that it put an obstruction for the marketing manager to get the actual picture (Ke and Li 2015).

In course of the discussion, it can be asserted that the cash flow and financial statement of Vegan Daddy is based on a strong organisational framework where the business funding is mainly generated either by getting loan from the bank or personal investments. Besides this, monitoring strategies like reduce the employee turnover rate and customer repetition are also come into discussion.

Therefore, it can be argued that Vegan Daddy has a strong marketing plan with accurate understanding of the market condition in the present case scenario. The company not only puts emphasis on maximizing its customers through providing quality services and products but also concerns about employees. There are a number of threats that the company is facing in the course of expanding its market capitalisation such as competitive market and economic instability in the country. However, there were some issues regarding the expenses and mapping target audiences. Furthermore, there is a problem with managing the employees. Despite of these challenges it can be concluded that with proper understanding of the fluctuations of the market with a good customer service will push Vegan Daddy towards meeting its goals. A healthy workplace culture also provides impetus for future sustainability of Vegan Daddy.

Reference

Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S. and Kotler, P., 2014. Principles of marketing. Pearson Australia.

Boddy, C.R., 2016. Sample size for qualitative research. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 19(4), pp.426-432.

Brito, P.Q., Soares, C., Almeida, S., Monte, A. and Byvoet, M., 2015. Customer segmentation in a large database of an online customized fashion business. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 36, pp.93-100.

Frawley, J.K. and Dyson, L.E., 2014, December. Animal personas: acknowledging non-human stakeholders in designing for sustainable food systems. In Proceedings of the 26th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference on Designing Futures: The Future of Design (pp. 21-30). ACM.

Galliers, R.D. and Leidner, D.E. eds., 2014. Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.

Ingenbleek, P.T., Meulenberg, M.T. and Van Trijp, H.C., 2015. Buyer social responsibility: A general concept and its implications for marketing management. Journal of Marketing Management, 31(13-14), pp.1428-1448.

Ke, H. and Li, L., 2015. Research on the Development of Chinese market Based on 4Ps Marketing Mix.

Khan, M.T., 2014. The concept of'marketing mix'and its elements (a conceptual review paper). International journal of information, business and management, 6(2), p.95.

Taylor, S.J., Bogdan, R. and DeVault, M., 2015. Introduction to qualitative research methods: A guidebook and resource. John Wiley & Sons.