Operating Strategy
The business itself will operate under the concept of a fine dining establishment with live entertainment 4 days a week. Aside from being a restaurant the business will also operate as a catering and merchandising establishment wherein customers can either buy in-store made products such as cakes, snacks and sauces as well as choose from a selection of catering options for parties and events.
Lastly Chevere Team-C Cuisine will also feature a bar with a wide selection of alcoholic/non-alcoholic beverages to choose from.
Dining
The main feature of Chevere Team-C Cuisine will of course be fine dining, as such all ingredients will be sourced from the local market in order to ensure their freshness with other ingredients unavailable from local sources (certain types of spices, specialized Latin American flavorings etc.) will be imported through the assistance of local ingredient suppliers.
The restaurant will not serve breakfast; rather, Chevere Team-C Cuisine will operate between the hours of 11:30 am in the morning till 12:30 am at night. The reason this particular schedule was chosen is due to the fact that most of the food to be offered (consisting mainly of Latin cuisine) is suitable for lunch or dinner, thus offering it in the morning would not be a suitable concept (Moll, 2006).
Chevere Team-C Cuisine will not operate under a buffet style means of service, rather, all food choices will be ordered through a menu with certain dishes being seasonal depending on the availability of the ingredients.
As mentioned earlier, Chevere Team-C Cuisine will operate under the concept of fine dining and as such all food will be brought and served to customers by waiters with various other amenities such as complementary snacks, drinks and other items brought depending on the availability for the day.
Catering
Chevere Team-C Cuisine’s catering service will consist of a relatively limited menu for events and parties.
The reason for this is due to the fact that the business plan for Chevere Team-C Cuisine focuses more on in-store service rather than catering and as such most of the staff and kitchen resources have been set for dealing with a regular crowd of daily customers rather than large orders that need to be made before hand, delivered and served at a party for a prolonged period of time.
The catering service will be available at any time of the day with delivery consisting of a rented van with at least 2 staff members sent as servers for the party/event.
All catering events must be requested at least a week before hand in order for Chevere Team-C Cuisine to properly prepare and rent the necessary equipment in order to serve food outside of the restaurant setting and to be able to assign staff arrangements in order to make up for the personnel sent to the event. Lastly, Chevere Team-C Cuisine will not include alcoholic beverages in its catering service.
Merchandising
In a small corner store near the front entrance Chevere Team-C Cuisine will also sell various items that customers can take home with them should they like certain items on the menu. This will consist of a variety of desserts (cakes, tarts, pastries etc.) or simple menu items that can be wrapped and brought home.
Also, since Latin cuisine has a variety of sauces that are quite delicious customers will be given the option to purchase some varieties of sauces that were created within the restaurants kitchen.
All packaging, labeling and storage will be taken care of by restaurant staff during the early hours of operation. It is expected that while demand for merchandise will be small it will be of great benefit to our customers that want to enjoy some of the food at home.
Beverages
The restaurant itself will have a small bar with a varied selection of alcoholic/nonalcoholic beverages.
While the content won’t be as varied compared to that of bars and other establishments specializing in the sale of alcoholic beverages the bar of Chevere Team-C Cuisine will be well stocked with at least the sort of beverages that will be determined before hand as being appropriate for the fine dining image that the restaurant is trying to show.
All alcohol will be sourced from local merchandisers within the local market district or bought online depending on the availability or popularity of certain brands and types of alcohol. In order to coincide with the theme of the restaurant certain types of alcohol and alcoholic beverages will be sourced from South American countries in order to coincide with the Latin inspired dishes that will be served.
Facilities and Equipment
The building chosen for the restaurant is located at 700 N. St. Mary St, San Antonio, TX 78205 with a floor area of roughly 7835 square feet with a total monthly cost of $11,752 per month or $141,024 per year.
The reason why this particular building was chosen was due to the fact that not only is it located in an area with a high degree of pedestrian traffic but also due to the fact that the restaurant has a planned seating capacity of at least 200 people in which case the size and space of the building at 700 N. St. Mary St would be appropriate to meet this need.
The floor plan of the restaurant will consist of a wide open space with a slightly raised platform located near the end where the chosen musical entertainment will perform. The bar will be located right beside the doors to the kitchen with metal stairs leading up to a second level dining area that will circle around the edges of the restaurant.
This section will have more space in the area directly overlooking the raised platform of the band so as to encourage people to view the night’s entertainment. The main level the dining areas will consist of 3 separate areas with two slightly raised areas at the sides with the area in the middle being slightly lower.
This is to ensure that all areas within the restaurant have a clear view of the entertainment platform resulting in fewer complaints that patrons could not see the band that is playing. Lastly the restaurant will feature valet parking with a capacity of at least half of the restaurant’s total customer capacity. This is due to space limitations within the adjoining parking structure.
Equipment expenses for the restaurant will consist of $660 for the telecommunication system (phones, order paging systems within the kitchen as well as walkie talkies for the valets), $12,600 for the computer system which will consist of a main computer interface where orders can be sent directly to the kitchen as well as recording orders made and total costs per table.
Lastly expenses related to other restaurant equipment consisting of: uniforms, towels, glassware, kitchenware, sound systems, bar equipment, walk-in refrigerators, stoves, food fryers, work tables, miscellaneous kitchen appliances, a gas grill, three 42 inch flat screen TVs as well as tables, chairs, booths and silverware have an estimated total cost of $82,200.
As mentioned earlier the restaurant will open between 11:30 am to 12:30 am in the evening and based on the average pedestrian traffic flow which increases towards noon this seems to be the most ideal schedule for a fine dining restaurant (Ernst, 2002).
Human Resources
The staff of the restaurant will consist of 6 managers (1 Head Manager, 1 Bar Manager, 2 Kitchen Managers, 2 Floor Managers), 1 Night Shift Security, 2 Day Shift Bus Boys, 3 Night Shift Bus Boys, 3 Sales/Marketing Staff, 1 Day Shift Hostess, 2 Night Shift Hostesses, and 24 operational employees (for day and night shift) consisting of waiters, kitchen staff, bartenders and cleaners. Lastly there will be 3 other employees hired for miscellaneous tasks such as delivery, catering etc.
The following is the estimated salary for each type of staff on the payroll:
Management: $36,000 per year
Security: $20,000 per year
Kitchen Staff: $22,000 per year
Hourly Personnel
Bus Boy: $6.00 per hour plus tips
Hostess: $8.00 per hour plus tips
Valet: $7.00 per hour plus tips
Waiter/Waitress: $6.00 per hour plus tips
Bar Staff: $8.00 per hour plus tips
For all the staff present there will be a wage increase of 2.5% per year with $2,500 being set aside for employee benefits with an incremental increase of 7% a year, this is for health insurance, benefits package etc.
IT plan
Team-C Cuisine will have a marginal IT cost of 2,000 for the website setup and design fee as well as $60 per year for host and domain name costs. The website will consist of an E-commerce section, a reservation section, a catering request section and a section where potential customers can view pictures of the restaurant and what kind of food it offers.
The E-commerce section of the site will be rather limited, consisting of a product lineup up of sauces, baked goods (cookies, cakes, and other desserts) that can either be delivered by our staff or be sent via courier.
The reason why the website will have this particular function is to make it more convenient for our customers to order minor items without having to come to the restaurant itself in order to buy them. The reservation section of the site will enable potential customers to see the current availability of tables on a particular day and make a reservation on the day they want to come and eat.
Not only does this streamline the process of reservation but it takes the burden off of people constantly calling the restaurant in order to make a reservation on a particular day only to find out that all the tables are full.
The catering request section on the site is there in order to make it more convenient for customers to see our catering menus and make requests via the online messaging system for costs, availability and special requests. This makes it far more convenient for them to avail of our catering service and helps to minimize the amount of people that the restaurant staff has to entertain on a daily basis with this particular type of request.
Lastly the information and display section of the site will contain pictures of the restaurant along with various pictures of the dishes that are served in order to entice customers to come in and try them. Also, the information section will contain a map to the restaurant as well as opening and closing times in order to help customers not only get to the restaurant itself but decide on the most appropriate time to go.
Reference List
Ernst, S. (2002). Market analysis, financial plan improve restaurants’ success. Hotel & Motel Management, 217(8), 10. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Moll, K. (2006). Prevent problems in your restaurants first year with careful planning, professional help. Nation’s Restaurant News, 40(10), 22. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.