Business Plan for a Lemonade Stand
Part 1
Business name: Easy Squeezie Lemonade Stand
For any business choosing a name is very important .You want to choose a name that is branding the company’s identity and ensuring that the name is fully protected and not registered to someone else. You should also give much thought to if this name has been selected by anyone through social media. It is also important for the business owner to select a simple, unique and relevant brand name that will send the message and the client immediately the clients sees the brand name (Tai, 2010). Name branding is a powerful and influential marketing tool even before the business owner can think of any other modes of advertisement.
Mission: Using integrity to provide outstanding customer service while servicing the town with freshly squeezed lemonade.
A mission statement is a brief and straightforward statement, which is used to outline the purpose and goals for a company such as Easy Squeezie Lemonade. For starters, a mission statement helps a company to have a common direction. The mission statement contributes a lot to business focus. The company work towards achieving a steady base. With that sense of bearing, the corporation can concentrate on the prospect. This proclamation involves the goals that the firm would like to accomplish in the future. It forms part of the main reasons as to why the organization is in existence. Every entity should have an operation statement since it presents an outline for administrative. When a business owner needs to make a decision, his/her ideas, opinions and views are focused towards a decision that will help to accomplish the mission (Bovée & Thill, 2016). Lastly, an undertaking statement helps an association to keep on evaluating and improving itself.
CSR Plan
The health of the community is important because they are the business targets, and therefore, the plan entails effective participation of all members of the society in efforts to establish strategies that can promote community health. Business leaders will also involve the community for the purpose of assisting children with chronic ailments. The corporate social responsibility of the business is to give back to the community by helping financing and building a facility for children suffering from chronic diseases. Thus, the institute will make an impact on the lives of the society members. The civilization also form part of the target clients for the merchandise created by the institute. Therefore, production of standard and quality product will improve the health status of clients.
Pricing Strategy
Price is one of the marketing tools that organizations use to sell their supplies. It is therefore important to be aware of and know how to price the manufactured goods prior to supplying them to market. Clients will look at the competing prices of substitute goods and make a purchasing decision. Branding is affected by pricing because quality brands are seen to be highly prices and the vice versa is true. For our company, the pricing strategy will be based on the cost of production. Therefore, one unit of lemonade will carry the price of acquiring the raw material, processing it, packaging and overhead costs. It ensures that a price considers the cost incurred in the assembly of the complete merchandise. This strategy has a number of advantages as outlined below. First, consumers are in a position to acquire the goods at the producers set price (Wührer, 2014). The company will dictate and control the fixing of market price for lemonade juice. Thus, the organization will engage in an intensive strategy to cut the cost of production so as to offer the lowest prices for products.
E-Commerce
Currently, sales target the local market only. However, targeting a wider market is possible through packaging the lemonade and selling it globally through online means. It is important that the business goes global by creating an online presence and selling through online means (Wührer, 2014). Selling online and using social media to market and brand the product creates a wider foundation to sell lemonade in a vast majority at a lower cost. In addition, online selling does not require much time since orders are made and delivered without interfering with the lemonade stand daily operations. Customers will make an order and pay for the good before the shipping activities commences. The shipping activities require that customer’s cater for the cost of moving the goods from the manufacturers premises to consumers designated places. This means that the price of the product for online clients will be inclusive of the transportation cost. For bulk buying, the company will offer discounted prices for goods amounting to $ 50,000.
Product
The merchandise is considered to be convenience item for consumption on a daily basis. It is also part of the commodities that citizens buy regularly, typically devoid of much planning (Page 316). With releasing any product the lemonade that will be sold will undergo the product life cycle. According to Charles, Joe and Carl (2008), the product is the most important element of the marketing mix elements which informs the design of all the other marketing mix elements i.e. the promotion, pricing and place. The important factors of a product include things like the packaging, labeling, brand name, value proposition etc. The aspect of the product is to offer the customer value. For Easy Squeezie Lemonade offering our customers, the highest quality lemonade will be crucial in doing our business. We will make every effort to manufacture high-quality juices for our market hence offering our customers the best beverages.
Our stand will also be branded with our current product offerings and the various prices applicable to the quantities on offer. This will help generate responsiveness of our products. We will benchmark our product against the existing brands to offer a superior offering. As Easy Squeezie Lemonade business continues to grow and expand, the business plans to supplement the existing product with new product lines to offer our customers more variety.
Promotion
According to Charles et al., (2008), promotion comprises all the actions undertaken by a business to inform the customers about the product. Promotion includes activities like advertising, publicity, personal selling and public associations. In acquiring a new business Easy Squeezie Lemonade needs to create awareness in the community and raise the visibility of its product in the market by devoting the necessary time, money and other resources to carry out promotional activities. Towards this end, we have a budget of $ 10,000 to promote our product. We intend to use this budget in the following promotional activities;
| Promotional activity | Budget |
| Free samples to be given to prospective customers | $ 2,500 |
| Advertising in print media e.g. newspaper and magazines | $ 4,500 |
| Branding the business | $ 2, 500 |
The management of the business also considers it important to have an online presence in line with the current trends. Towards this end, Easy Squeezie will be coming up with a website show casing the various product offerings of Easy Squeezie Lemonade. The website will also be useful to inform people of our physical location, contacts and processing online orders. This will help create a new avenue to create additional sales.
Place
The place also called the distribution component is an important element in the marketing mix. The Place element aims to bring the product to the customer to satisfy the customer’s needs.
The place informs business decisions to do with location, distribution channels and storage facility (Johan, 2005). The placement of the company in the current position has earned it a place in the market. This is because of the efficiency in accessibility of raw materials and market. The ready market consumes the good and services produced hence improve the market activities. This has earned the organization money enough for expansion. Raw material for the production of juices is readily available due to good infrastructure. This means that the organization has enough stock at any given time an action that facilitates distribution activities by suppliers within the local market. The transportation of raw material from farms to the organization premises reduced a lot due to the efficiency of road networks. Thus, the cost of acquiring goods has also reduced significantly as the organization gets the good right from the farmers who offer them at a discounted rate. The elimination of suppliers ensures that goods are in the company on time and ordered at the right price. Most suppliers tend to inflate the prices so that they can benefit from these activities. These are the reasons behind the success. Due to the current success of Easy Squeezie Lemonade Stand, the management needs to have an additional outlet in order to attract new customers and also enhance business growth.
The new outlet chosen should meet the sales needs of the business. It should be a place that will generate high sales volumes and the overhead costs are reasonable e.g. rent. The new location should also enhance the brand image of Easy Squeezie Lemonade by having a great outlay that attracts people to the business. The outlet should also be in a place that will attract new customers who customarily would not visit the current stand. The best location that the management has identified for this expansion is a new shopping mall that is coming up in the community. A shopping mall attracts a high volume of people coming to shop thus, guaranteeing high volume sales. In addition the clientele that frequents shopping malls is also different from the one visiting the stand guaranteeing that the business will generate new sales in a new market.
Motivation of the Employees
One of the goals of the management of a business is to motivate the employees to perform their duties. For Easy Squeezie Lemonade employees, the sale staffs have an important goal of driving sales to help the business meet its objectives. Sales people are the face of the business and their interactions with the customers will determine whether the customers leave satisfied or leave unhappy and never come back again. A business needs to keep the existing customers while attracting new ones in order to thrive and grow. Employees play a crucial role in keeping customers happy and creating long-term value for the business.
To keep the employees encouraged Easy Squeezie Lemonade management will need to do the following. Implement a remuneration system that motivates the employees to sell more and rewards their effort when they meet and exceed their sale targets e.g. giving a bonus to recognize performance. Giving regular feedback on the employees’ performance is important in increasing the motivation of the employees. This feedback should include what the employees are doing and how they can improve. As the owner, it is important to coach my employees to increase their perspective of things and help them set high goals for themselves. As the manager, I would take time and stay connected with the employee to help him/her understand the selling process and how they handle the customers to identify any shortcomings that can be addressed (chuck 2015).
References
Bovée, C.L., & Thill, J.V. (2016). Business in action. Boston: Pearson Education.
Charles, W.L, Joe, F.H, Carl, M. (2008). Essentials of Marketing. Boston: Cengage Learning.
Chuck, W. (2015). Effective Management. Boston: Cengage Learning.
Johan, S. (2005). Introduction to Marketing. Juata and company ltd .
Tai, J. (2010). Get a Name: 10 Rules to Create a Great Brand Name. Singapore: Marshall
Cavendish International (Asia) Ptd Ltd.
Wührer, G. (2014). International Marketing Compact. Wien: Linde Verlag Ges.m.b.H.