Blog #14

December 14, 2015

On my off time, Kristen made it clear to me that I was in charge of posting a picture on The Early Bird Account once a day, switching back and forth between a photo of their products and an informative photo releasing information anywhere from sales, to the announcements leading up to The Early Bird expansion.

I have come to the realization that this semester is more of the basic running-a-business learning experience rather than the expanding-a-business learning experience. Next semester I will be shadowing and actually designing the new building downtown, rather than just helping in the areas that are needed around the current location. While I am not yet learning what I had hoped to, I am learning how hard and exhausting it is to run a business. I learned that not only does Kristen and Daniel have to manage and meet every customer's needs, but they have to do the same towards the employes as well. I have learned that in order to keep hard working and well skilled employees, their needs need to be met as well. In addition to the labor relations aspect of this project, I have also learned that being an entrepreneur has to have leadership like qualities. Not only are they in charge of everything, but they also have to set and example, and take responsibly for anyone that walks into the premises, or anything that occurs in the restaurant.

Blog #13

December 9, 2015

Today I again met with Kristen at The Early Bird Restaurant. Here, I took a look at how many followers we had gained being I am now fully in charge of The Early Birds social media accounts. We came to the conclusion that we have gained 307 followers since I have been in charge. I have made a few adjustments as to the pictures that are being posted and the quality of them as well. Although we are gaining followers, this being good because we are hoping to soon advertise for the new expansion, but we wanted to know if the people who are following us on these social media accounts, are actually coming in. We had to develop a plan to see if our advertising on the internet was actually beneficial, or if it is all in our heads. I came up with the idea of making new receipts. On the bottom of these receipts, will be a link that connects the customer to a link. The plan is, if the customer takes the one question survey, they vill receive a free coffee their next visit. The question on the survey will be "How did you hear about our business." Not only will this be beneficial for the sake of our own knowledge, but it will also be beneficial for marketing research purposes as well. We will soon be able to see our most beneficial route to advertising.

Not only did we talk about the social media aspect of the business, but we also discussed the opening date of the expansion. Later today, Kristen was actually meeting to sign the lease for the new building. It occurred to me that it takes months and even years of planning, before actually committing to the restaurant's new and improved steps to in hopes, make a profit. During this time, we discussed our target markets of the new location, the design aspect, and the grand opening schedule. To start, we discussed our target market. It is evident that the new restaurant's location is in an extremely wealthy part of the downtown area, being we are going to raise our prices. We are also going to target older wealthy couples that have retired and would like to sip on a mimosas mid morning. We are incorporating alcohol into the equation due to the older demographics of people in the wealthy area. Next, we discussed the design factors of the restaurant. Kristen made is clear she wants to keep the modern, cute, farm house look. Going off of this, she showed me her financials plan, and her online shopping that she had already started. At last, Kristen requested for me and a couple friends to be there on the grand opening to help set up, and welcome customers into the new Early Bird.

The last portion of my hours today were spent on taking pictures of the food and uploading them to social media, in hope for more advertisement to the business.

Blog #9

I again met with my mentor today at the restaurant. Not only did she explain to me her vision, but she showed me how important it is to have a mission statement. She explained that the vision at the beginning of opening the business, should still be the same as the vision is to the extent that the restaurant is successful. On a different note, she made it clear that the mission statement should change throughout the process, as new goals should continiusely be being made. I learned that the determining factor as to whether or not they were successful during their mission statement is how much profit is made in a year. Kristen showed me several charts and spreadsheets that showed their predictions for how much inventory they are going to sell each month (forecasting) and the actual profit made each month. At last, I leaned that Kristen went by the accrimum of SMART as seen below in order to create and obtain her goals. It is evident that many businesses fail due to the fact that they do not sit down and write out a solid business plan.
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time
goals

Blog #12

December 2, 2015

Today I was present at The Early Bird and my task was to take pictures of some of the delicious items to put on Early Bird Instagram page, being I was assigned to officially be in charge of social media. It is now my role to gain followers, and post accordingly in order to advertise the restaurant. Here is a preview of some of the items below. 

Blog #11

December 2, 2015

This past week I was assigned the task of following our biggest competitors on all aspects of social media. Below is a chart that represents the statistical data that I collected over the past week. 

The first row represents our main competition. The second row shows the amount of followers that were taken into account from the beginning of the week, to the end of the week. The third row is how many times the company posted on Instagram within the reframed time period. At last, the fourth row was a simple data collection on what specific posts got the most likes. Based off of this information, we decided that we needed more followers if we wanted to successfully advertise. We devised a plan of visiting our competitions accounts. From there, we followed all of their followers and the people that they were following, in order to get our account more known. We came to the conclusion that if customers are willing to follow other restaurants similar to ours, they would be willing to follow The Early Bird as well. 

Competition Statistics

Snooze	Smashburger	Chipotle	Sams	The Original Pancake House	Jellys Cafe
10.2k to 10.5k	11.4k to 11.9k	261k 266k	278 to 285	225 to 232	2773 to 2800
27 posts	12 posts	4 posts	no posts	no posts	5 posts
8 ppl restaurant 14 food 1 quotes 1 tweet from celebrity 1 announcement most likes on food and people	8 food 3 both people and food 1 smash cash most likes on food	1 burrito christmas theme 2 burrito thanksgiving theme 1 fall theme all have similar likes	mostly ppl and food	food	1animated character thanksgiving announcement 2 food 1 bigfoot most likes on bigfoot and food

Blog #10

Here is a list of continuing subjects we discussed at out meeting today. bank statements
mission statements (did change)
goals
S
M
A
R
T
startup cost and fund allocations
spreadsheets
excel workseet for products
found app for social media
business philosohy
vision (didn't change)
competition
demographics
target market
average income of customers
figuring out buying income
specofics on what they were going to purchase
what their lease was
credit scores bank didn't care interesting
increase prices down in new location bc there is more money but not noticeably
check out competition
rent is more expensives down there
alchoo bc retired and a lot of money
profit margins way higher (wine example)

Blog #8

November 11, 2015

Today I decided to take the initiative on my day off to work with my mentor. It was an interesting experience and I learned that not every day in the restaurant industry is the same. I was supposed to meet with Kristen at 11:30 am, but unfortunately a cook in the back cut her finger, meaning Kristen had to rush her to the emergency room. It turned out Kristen was gone for three hours, so she texted me a list of things to do in the meantime. To start, I had to organize and count all the shirts and sweatshirts in order for her to know how much more merchandise to order. Below was my way of organizing my results.

red sweatshirts       black sweatshirts

small:  5             small: 6

medium: 5 medium: 2 (teo payed for)

large: 5 large: 3

extra large: 5 extra large: 5

tee shirts:

first letter = color, second letter/s =size

mens womans

bxl        rxl

bm

wm

gxl

bxl

gl

bs

gxl

bs

wm

rxl

gm

bs

gs

gm

gl

rm

rl

ws

ws

rxl

wxl

rm

gm

bs

gm

gxl

gxl

mxl

rl

gs

gl

wxl

wm

rxl

rm

gs

wxl

rl

ws

rl

gxl

rm

bm

gxl

wxl

bm

bm

bxl

gm

ws

bxl

mens                                  womens

red small 0          red extra large

red medium 3

red large 4

red extra large 2

blue small 3

blue medium 3

blue large 0

blue xl 3

green small 3

green medium 5

green large 2

green extra large 6

white small 5

white medium 1

white large 0

white extra large 4

red sweatshirts black sweatshirts

small:  5             small: 6

medium: 5 medium: 2 (teo payed for)

large: 5 large: 3

extra large: 5 extra large: 5

tee shirts:

first letter= color, second= size

mens womans

bxl rxl

bm

wm

gxl

bxl

gl

bs

gxl

bs

wm

rxl

gm

bs

gs

gm

gl

rm

rl

ws

ws

rxl

wxl

rm

gm

bs

gm

gxl

gxl

mxl

rl

gs

gl

wxl

wm

rxl

rm

gs

wxl

rl

ws

rl

gxl

rm

bm

gxl

wxl

bm

bm

bxl

gm

ws

bxl

mens womans

red small 0 red extra large

red medium 3

red large 4

red extra large 2

blue small 3

blue medium 3

blue large 0

blue xl 3

green small 3

green medium 5

green large 2

green extra large 6

white small 5

white medium 1

white large 0

white extra large 4

In addition to organizing the merchandise, I also had to take pictures of certain products to then upload onto The Early Bird website for advertisement purposes. I also made a festive gift card stand, in order for their product to stand out to the customers. Below are pictures that will soon be uploaded to their website. I did several little tasks today in order to understand the life of an entrepreneur.