20th March 2019

After work, I have reached school around 7pm to visit WSC to take a look and see how they are enjoying the food so far.

I managed to asked Shurong and YueFeng to help out with the collection of the food and drinks. Shurong ended her class at 430pm and she rushed to NTU Arc to receive the food from Polar. YueFeng on the other hand, went to collect the jelly drink which I have placed in Eunice's hall. They manage to put the food items on the desk for the event and everything went out quite smoothly.

When I reached the location, WSC was having an event whereby their members are consuming our food and at the same time playing with board games. This was part of thier bonding session every year and I managed to take a few shots of their event. I asked their opinions of the food and have gotten many positive reviews. They liked the cake roll from Polar and they felt it was quite a good mix. However, a few voiced out that the apple tartlet was a bit small. All in all, they were quite satisfied and I think we did a preety good job for our first catering customer :)

I also manage to film a bit and hopefully this footage can be used as part of a marketing video which I am trying to work on..

20th March 2019

Over the few days, we have been discussing on the terms stated on the contract from NIE..

Today, Alvin whatsapped us this morning on both contracts from both NIE and Smart Retail and I'm really distraught because the conditions laid upon us from NIE is quite harsh in my opinion. Smart Retail on the other hand, also has their strict policy on additional costs we have to bear such as relocation.

Time is very tight. The NIE has awarded us with the winning bid of $75 for 3 vending machines. Throughout the whole morning, I was comparing both contracts from Smart Retail and NIE, trying my best to clarify any form of doubts as well as asking Alvin to check a few terms which was not accurate to what we agreed upon earlier.

In regards to this project, we are only earning 15% of the total sales and I really am not sure if it would compensate the $25/machine which we are paying NIE for the license fee. This is really a new market which we have never touched before.

After reading the contract word by word, I have taken note of what is required and Alvin has managed to clarify with NIE. There are alot of risk involve and I am not sure if it's right to take up this project. I have listed down all the contract points which we need to look out and added side notes on a compiled word document.

For instance:

1. In the case NIE requests for relocation of the machine which they verbally said that they will not, we will have to pay SmartRetail $800 to relocate the machine...

2. NIE states that the licensee which is us, have to take up the following insurance policies and pay the full payment of the premiums

(a) Work Injury Compensation

(b) General Liability Insurance

-food poisioning - &1 million dollars and accidents may even reach unlimited liability. (Look below, left)

As for point 2, I am really hoping that SmartRetail can write these terms in their contract so as to prove that they will bear these responsibility. Alvin has managed to sound this out to them.

3. Smart Retail added a condition whereby in the case they don't hit a sales target of $300, we have to pay them to top up the difference. Considering that we have to bear the loss to NIE and now to Smart Retail, I really don't know how this is going to work out if the sales from the first month is really bad. I have sounded this out to Alvin and he went on to negotiate and lower it to $200. Though it's a price that we still have to pay if sales is not good, we have worked hard to push down the sales target price...

4. Another concern raised was the damage caused by Fire, Flood, Acts of God, Casualty. (Look below, right) If any of the mentioned happens, we bear the responsibility. I am not sure if this will happen but if it does, we have to bear it...

This is the first time dealing with a contract, and I must say I am really worried. The rest of the group members are busy with their mid terms and Alvin is really being pressured by the time given by both NIE and the SmartRetail to get the contract sign...

If all goes well, Alvin will sign the contract tomorrow (21st March). He needs another person to sign as well with NIE. As long as SmartRetail is willing to cover all the big liabilities that NIE has proposed, I think this project should be fine... I am really praying that nothing bad happens within this 2 years. At the moment in time, there is a huge cross-road - To take the perceived huge risk, such as relocation and unknown sales target, together OR To be safe and work solely on our food catering???

13th March 2019

It felt like we were just here, looking at our previous seniors, sharing their MIE journey.. Today is our turn...

After a long and tedious 2 semesters, it is time for us to showcase what we have done. We shared our experiences, our marketing efforts and also acknowledged the loss we have made through the first business model. We also shared with our peers and the future batches on how we managed to tweak our business model and work on our current business model related to food catering.

After the end of our presentation, the NTC even had an interview with us to hear our thoughts and our experiences during this two semesters.

I believe that this showcase is not an end to Chop Chop's journey but it's more of a pitstop to tell us that, hey, we have learnt and done so much during the past 2 semesters...

From curating content since day 1 to sourcing and liaising with suppliers, producing info graphics, producing videos, planning for what's ahead and how to re-strategize, coming out with proposal and even sourcing for future collaborations, I think MIE has really been a platform for me to venture into something I didn't expect myself to commit to so so so much.

Considering that my team members are all equally committed, I am really thankful towards all my team members - Alvin, Eunice, Shurong and YueFeng!!! Despite being the only individual from Engineering and the 4 of them from the School of Business, I think our team blended very well together. We might be at loss at the start but hey, we manage to pull through till the end! :) And well, I am not sure about the future of Chop Chop Events but I am well aware that we will all move on and continue our second season together :) :) :) :) :)

8th March 2019

Alvin has submitted the proposal for the vending machine project as part of a source of revenue for Chop Chop in the long run.

Background

NIE requires 3 vending machine and they are asking companies to bid for this project to sell tibits and light snacks for students who are in NIE.

Providing a quotation

While Alvin has managed to source for a vending machine-caterer to carry out this project entirely on themselves with us earning a commission of 15% from their sales generated, we had a hard time to figure out a quotation to bid for this project. Due to our inexperience in this field and lack of resources of how much we can generate from this, we have relied our data heavily on our vending machine-caterer. Base on their (Smart Retail Vending) experience, they said that they could earn at least $300 per machine per month. Considering that amount, 15% of it would be $45. After much thought, we decided to bid the project by giving $25 per machine per month. That means in the worst case, each of us will get $12 (from 3 machines) of "pocket money" each month for a span of 2 years. That is $12 X 24 = $288 for 2 years each.

We are not sure if this bidding will work out but we really hope that the numbers we give will be sufficient to get this project.

As the whole project will be handled by Smart Retail vending, Chop Chop will just have to handle the administrative procedures with NIE and earn the money (if we will earn) to help recuperate the loss of our first week sales. :P

Hopefully, we can get back the 500 dollars that we each invested or perhaps something more than $500...

Future Considerations

As we have started to liaise with Smart Retail Vending, another potential source of revenue for us is to rent a vending machine from them and perhaps sell something such as our onigiri. However, this is just my idea and my other team members foudn that onigiri being a perishable goods might not be an ideal item to sell as we might have to change the food in the vending machine constantly every 3 days.

but anyway...

JIAYOU and good luck Chop Chop in getting this project in collaboration with SMARTRETAIL!!

6th March 2019

6^th March 2019

Over the past week or so, Alvin has been constantly sourcing for projects for Chop Chop by utilizing the Ariba portal from the school to expand our food catering business and gaining more projects on our side. One of which that we wanted to work on was the NIE contract which consists of 329 catering business opportunity.

As it will be a high tea project, one suggested proposal was to utilize the special menu that Polar will provide us with. A few issues discussed was the need for one of us to be there to sign the form when Polar arrives. Moreover, one of us also must be there to help set up the catering food on the table. While the food supplier side can be settled on my side, the main issue to this project was the lack of manpower on our side.

After reviewing the orders as well as the manpower issue, we have decided not to proceed with this project. As the catering business consists of 4 to 5 projects in a single day, our people might not be able to accommodate the projects requested from the school. Moreover, some considerations included projects that have minimum order numbers which means there will be an added cost on the delivery. While recruiting people in school to help us over the span of 3 months was the best solution we can think of so far, there was more issues to overcome - For instance the punctuality and how committed will these new recruits be, their pay which will add on to our overheads, etc. etc.

Despite not moving on to bid for this project, I personally feel that this attempted move to work on this project has made us more critical in terms of planning and perhaps motivate us to create a certain SOP. In this case when Chop Chop expands in the future, we will take note of such business opportunities in Ariba and also expand by considering how many people we want to hire to aid in big catering projects like this one.

1st March 2019

Morning Good News

It has been a long two weeks juggling between internship and MIE. Just yesterday, we finally manged to finalize our slides for our upcoming presentation for the following Wednesday. Unlike most other groups, I feel like we are having two business models to present within the short time frame....

Anyway, As usual, our whatsapp message would be flooded with all the new updates from all of our team members. Today was no different. However, it really made my day because Eunice suddenly blasted in the group chat. "hello I got exciting news WSC (Welfare Service Club) wana order le'' It was really heartening to see the message especially after burning the midnight oil these few days to come out with menus and thinking of ways to quote the price for the proposal.

However, if I really have to start this narration, I shall begin the story from CNY...

Chinese New Year - How we got the drinks supply?

During the Chinese New year period, one of my relatives came over to my house and gave us 8 boxes of Jelly Joy drinks. It happened that my aunt's husband had a huge supply of Jelly Joy which he somehow manage to take over from the initial suppliers. He was selling it at $25/box (50 pax). It so happen that they needed to clear their stock in the warehouse and my aunt decided to distribute the excess to all her relatives including us. My mom knew about my MIE project and told me that she will "sponsor" and give me the 4 boxes for for our project - either the pre order food business or the food catering business. I shared with my team mates but most of them said it wasn't a good idea because these were drinks which only cater to kids, not uni students. When I asked if it will be a good idea to sell them in school or perhaps package it with the onigiri to sell it as a childhood theme, most of them won't really incline to the idea. And so, these boxes were left lurking in the living room...

26/02/2019-27/02/2019

Crafting a proposal for Banyan

Despite getting our current suppliers and customers, our group has not worked on collating a compiled menu from various suppliers to cater the needs of the customers.

As such, I have proposed to come out with a customized menu/proposal to meet the needs of the customer. As I do have a special menu provided from Polar that is not make available to the general public, I have decided to work on Polar as the caterer to produce a simple proposal for Banyan. Below are a few snippets of how a proposal will be given to our customers. The front page will list down the suppliers we have and make the menu more comprehensible for the customers.

For instance, the initial Polar food menu does not have the prices shown together on the picture. Hence, to customize the menu, I have added the prices as an overlay on top of Polar's food menu as part of a customization on our side.

26/02/2019

Sharing Session by Mr. Eddy Lee

Today, I manage to come down from intern to attend a workshop conducted by NTU entrepreneurship society. The sharing session was mainly focused on how to sell our product effectively.

A strategy/analogy he shared was to ask customers on whether shutting down a product or service will result in great disappointment or not? Focus on 50% of people who are very disappointed and analyze on the few who is only somewhat disappointed. Finding out why they are only somewhat disappointed can help us in increasing our product features.

Advice for future and present

After sharing with him on our current business model, he mentioned that our business might not attract VCs if we will be one who are managing. However, in the long run if it works out well, we will still be able to earn, but more importantly, we need to have internal control as it is essential once a company reaches more than 50 people. Management will always be an issue. This was something that we have to take note in the future.

However, to address our concerns in building our start up and hoping to market our business to our customers, what he recommended was for us to really distinguish ourselves from the rest. Tap on what is the need in the market. For instance, to target the environmentalists, we can come out with being the caterer who uses environmentally friendly plates and utensils, etc.

This comes down to our USP. On a personal note, I feel that if we will to target on students who are going to host events, one way to curb this problem is to search for food suppliers who will provide both taste and affordability.

Thought out Solution

One current solution that I can think of to curb the high cost from the food cater companies is to get food suppliers (just food alone) and we as Chop Chop LLP, will provide the catering service by setting up the table and drinks on our side. From this perspective, we can push down the cost from food caterers to conduct catering and invest more on better food quality.

Group Photo with Mr Eddy Lee together with my group members and Jingyue from Myadfriends :)

25/02/2019

Buffet Hopping

Today, my intern company, Keysight had our first Q1 Coffee Talk. It was a short talk and I was surprised that they actually catered food for this short event. I think I am quite well known among my intern friends for being a ganjiong cheapo for being the first and only intern to rush to any buffet table to film/take photo then eat. As of date, I am thinking of ways to get video footage so I can produce another promotional video for our food-catering business.

Over the past one month since Chinese New Year, I have noticed my company, Keysight has engaged a few food caterers to either celebrate festive seasons as well as conducting small tea-break catering for small talks like the Coffee Talk (Right below).

I have engaged the HR as they were the one in charge of the food-catering and I was being told that most corporate would engage in the same caterer for a certain event, like for CNY, they would engage in Deli Hub Catering and food barn for most small-caterings for important guests. She also shared a rough estimate of how much the company spent for the food catering during CNY and also state that discounts are usually not given to corporate companies unless their per pax is alot. This might be a market we can tap in in the future. Considering that these companies do not have the advantage to lower their price, it might be a good idea to source for customers from the corporate side apart from just targetting students in school. However, one thing to note, is that, if we will to provide food catering to them, we really have to either get a good discount from the caterers OR really find something to differentiate ourselves from the market.

Another issue she raised to me was the fact that pax numbers can no longer be "cheated" in the sense that if they do have 190 people dining for the buffet, they are not allowed to lower the number to 170 or 160 because the food caters will only provide specific numbers for special food items like puffs or pieces of fried chicken, etc. Base on this insight, it did give us a warning/pre-caution that if we really approach the caterers on our side, we should never taper the numbers to our advantage.

22/02/2019 to 23/02/2019

Unicon 2019

Our weekends were basically burnt... burnt but at least in a meaningful way. There were many motivating entrepreneurs during this event. Some shared their inspiring story like how the CEO of upcode academy, slowly grow from being someone with no university education to where he is right now - a successful entrepreneur. The panel discussions were also impactful. Companies like Shopback shared with us their blue ocean strategies - How they market themselves in a different country, etc. The Unicon Arena on the second day was also a great platform for us to learn how to pitch effectively. The teams were really good and one that stood out from the rest was this 15 year old student who pitched about having a cashless system to cater to teenagers. It was a fantastic pitch in my opinion. Given his age and the great analysis being broken down during the pitch, I think we learnt alot from this event. However, further insights will be shared in the report itself.

21/02/2019

A takea-way from the Speaker's Series "Fintech Industry" (Event 2)

One of the speakers today said " Always have the big picture in the head. Don't build a product around a technology but instead, dive into the problem not the solution!" Indeed, what he said might be in a different context but it hit me. if I really dive deep into the problem of our current situation: Not having a target group who is keen in pre-ordering for our Chop Chop food business, what's the point of operating when no one apparently sees it as an urgent one?

Well, for the past few months, I might have been the few or the only one who kept spamming our whatsapp group with messages on ideas and solutions as to how we can revive our Chop Chop pre-order food business. Yes, there is a part of me who is going with the flow of the group's plan - constantly looking out for food catering companies be it in my intern company, my cca, events I go for. However,there's also another part of me who constantly holds on to the group's initial business model - the food pre-ordering system.

Maybe, I have been trying too hard to come out with the solution but never really look at the real problem we are facing at hand - the inability to sustain it because it is a real huge commitment from the rest. There is no safety net to secure a pool of customers before ordering. Well, that is why I did the survey last Tuesday... , I guess it's time for me to acknowledge the fact that:

1. Not everyone in our group is able to operate during peak lunch hours.

2. The MOQ is just too high for us to sell onigiri/bentoes a day. The sales target is too high.

3. We don't exactly have a fixed location as to where we should sell our onigiri. Despite saying Hive, we have to chope the seats to ensure we are able to operate.

Hence, maybe it's time to put a stop to think of ways to revive the old model but fully focus on working the new one and network with more food suppliers before we can continue with lowering the MOQ for bentoes/ onigiri for a supposed pre-ordering food business in the near or perhaps far future.

Seeking events during events

As buffet-event fanatics, our group, went all out to ask if the person-in-charge of today's speaker series, if they are in search of food caterers. I shared with them about our current new business model and apparently they look interested. However, sadly, this was their last event that required a food caterer (as for this semester). Apparently, if we have to ask for the person-in-charge for the next semester, we have to wait for NTUES next election because the newly elected person in charge will then proceed with sourcing for food caterers. I guess they will be placed in our future-client list for now...

Getting an opinion from the President of NTUES in regards to Pre-order food

For the past few days, I have forced myself to ask people I don't know to complete the survey I just proposed a few days ago. Thankfully, the president of NTUES was friendly and he did the survey while eating as I shared with him the previous business model. While he did said he was interested, his opinion on this was that it wasn't really a big need. When asked for his phone number for the last question, there was great hesitation which I found a great resemblance to almost everyone I asked - the long pause as to whether the phone number should be given just to pre-order lunch. At that instance, it did tune my mind a bit - hey, maybe. It's really okay to stop stressing on pre-order and just focus on catering as of date.

MyadFriends

Besides attending the talk and gaining insights, another new agenda/meet up I had with alvin, shurong and Jingyue was regarding our collaboration with myAdfriend. We did briefly discuss a bit on how the collaboration was going to proceed. Base on my understanding, they will help us gain impression from different halls and clubs. I guess it's not a bad idea to collaborate with them because they might be able to network with groups that our group did not focus on tapping. Initially, I did question why we are actually outsourcing this when we can just do this ourselves. However, from a scalable point of view, maybe it won't be a bad idea if we can also reach out to NUS or even events that are not related to school.

19/02/2019

Survey

While we have been busy sourcing for suppliers for our main catering business, I really feel that our previous business model might just work out if we are able to get a pool of customers who can pre-order their food way before we start ordering from our supplier.

As such, I have decided to come out with a simple survey (7 simple questions).

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaDx7BVYfoJ1KseZ98huzRlwMh5csg4exuUU5CwhLwri2KlQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

As we currently have a list of food suppliers, I was able to list down the food we have to see the crowd's desired food option. The main sole purpose of this survey was not just to get statistic data to the questions but mainly to obtain our potential customer's contact, I have mentioned to them that this was a pilot study and the last two questions are as follow:

6. If this business does roll out, would you be interested in doing a pre-order of the food mention above?

7. If you answer yes above, we will be happy to give you a special discount on your first purchase. If you are interested, can you kindly leave your name and contact number so we can update you on our food business. (Name, Contact Number)

10/02/2019

Supplier (Polar Puffs & Cakes)

Over the past weeks, our team has been sourcing for various food suppliers to aid in our food-event catering business. We have decided to go all out to search for all kinds of food. This in turn can help to provide a long list of food items for our clients. It happened that one of our clients is searching for a breakfast menu.

Coincidentally, I happened to be in process with liaising with the Polar sales team.

Initially, I sourced for the contact from the site. I gave the sales team a call and they manage to provide me with one menu and after a few rounds of negotiation between emails and a phone call, the sales person gave me a 10% discount in view for the bulk purchase that we hope to clinch with our current client.

Lesson Learnt here: It's always good to ask if they can lower their price. Negotiation is necessary if you really want to lower the cost price.

However, in the process of liaising with this particular sales team, my dad happens to know about it and he told me that his friend happens to be a purchaser of Polar. He managed to get the contact of a Polar's corporate sales manager from his friend. I managed to give her a call which led to another round of negotiation. This time, the negotiation felt a bit smoother because there was a bit of 'guan xi' involve. As she happens to be in close relation with the purchaser (my dad's friend), she proposed another menu (A cheaper menu for schools. Specifically, MOE) The cost price for 3 items in a pack (mini versions) were relatively cheap. On top of that, she also gave me a 15% discount for the exact same menu the previous sales team gave.

Lesson Learnt here: If you can get the contact of someone who has greater authority in the company, do that!

29/01/2019

As part of this entrepreneur module (ET9135), another compulsory task was for us is to attend 4 seminar events (A Cumulative duration of 12 hours). Hence, to fulfill this requirement, I finally manage to attend one sharing session hosted by CAO in NTU after my work from internship. This sharing session was conducted by Elaine Ng, an entrepreneur in the HR consultancy.

Importance of networking

Before Elaine Ng conducted her sharing session, one of the CAO (NTU Career Axis) representative told us the importance of attending networking session such as the one we attended today.

"When there's an opportunity to network, go all out to network. When people know you, this is when opportunity comes. Jobs usually come through referral.''

- A representative from CAO

Sharing Session

Elaine Ng started by sharing her entrepreneur journey. From starting out at HRBS, she started with nothing in a foreign land. However, she decided to sell off HRBS with 45 employees and went all out to start another company and restart her journey.

Back in the days, she was young and independent. She has the desire to be free. Money to her is secondary and what she seeks is mainly knowledge. As a risk-taker, she says it is important to be determine. She takes risk and she knows she needs to win. If she loses, she will start again.

Considering that she previously had a good career with her employers paying for her housing in Hong Kong, her decision to give up the big cheque was considered a big risk on her side. I guess this is one of the traits an entrepreneur should possess.

A few points to take note during one's entrepreneur journey:

1. Do it very good or don't do it entirely.

(Do your best!)

2. Take risk only when you have no baggage.

(In her case, as she has no children or mortage, it was fine for her to take risk as this will not implicate anyone around her. )

3. Be discipline.

(Always learn new things and also do the task given to you.)

4. Employees always come first. - Pay higher than market.

(Performance to her is important. That is why she started her company with high salaries. As her company had no brand, it was important to compensate her employees with high salaries.)

5. Do everything yourself

(Similar to most entrepreneurs, when you are starting out small, you have to do all the planing and operation by yourselves. For instance, looking our for customers, knowing what products to sell in the market, etc.)

6. Continuity of Income

(Starting our small also means that you might not have a large capital to carry out your operation. Therefore, a continuity of income is important because this can allow one to sustain his or her business in the long run. Eg: In her case, she has her customers to pay for a year of service throughout a year providing a sustainable in flow of cash in her business.)

To end of her entrepreneur journey, she also gave us an 8 levels- model of love.

A. Acceptance

B. Friendliness

C. Trust (More willing to go to that person)

D. Kindness (Give support)

E. Affinity

F. Devotion

G. Adoration

H. Infatuation

In any form of business, it's always best to reach the 4th level of love - just slightly lower than affinity. Kindness. Be kind to the people working for us. It would bring the best in people and a successful business eventually. :)

27/01/2019

Finalized Plan

It's going to be week 3.

Due to the great loss during our week 1 business, our group has decided to transit and move on by catering to school halls. We did not operate our Chop Chop! Onigiri during week 2 and we took the time to discuss, re-evaluate our decisions as well as proceeding with our Chop Chop events-catering.

Many things happened during that one week.

1. We just registered CHOP CHOP EVENTS LLP under ACRA.

2. Some of us were liaising with halls whereas some were sourcing for more food suppliers.

3. There was a doubt in whether we should continue with selling onigiri or other food products during lunch-peak hour. Personally, I think it's a good form of revenue if we are able to sustain it in the long run. However, due to heavy commitment require from my 3 other friends (who are apparently the only people in school who can operate now because Shurong and I are doing our internships), it was concluded that we put this on halt.

Back-up/Rejected Plan

However, I do have an alternative/back-up plan if any of us decides to go back in selling food during lunch-peak hours.

Since the commitment required was 3 days a week, I have proposed the ''Slashing promotion'' to sell our onigiri/ nasi lemak (if we want to cater Halal food).

Instead of operating for 3 days and relying our sales on people who would walk in and purchase, our operation will only require 1 day and the sales can be better forecast (since our whole initial concept was for people to order it online and then grab and go).

The initial plan (if we decided to go with this during week 2) is as follows:

1. Market our onigiri using the Slash Method. (Buy your onigiri at lower price if more people buy)

2. Inform the public that we have to reach 100 onigiri orders to give them a discounted price from $2.50 to $1.50 (For example). If a total of 50 orders have been made, all 50 students will get a $1.00 discount each. If we get 100 orders, all of them will get their onigiri at only $1.50 each. From our perspective, we hope that by doing so, students would be motivated to spread the message and by them doing so, we can hit our MOQ for free delivery as well.

3. The plan was to take that entire week 2 to promote the slashing marketing to the public. Then if they agree, they will pay the full amount to one of the five group members. After collating the amount, we will then send it to the main account when the order and price is confirm.

4. After Friday, we will view the list to see how many orders we have. By then, we can proceed with informing them about the total slashes we have gotten so far and then send them a confirmation that they have purchased this food at this price. (Refer to diagrams below to see how the slash method works)

Limitation of back-up/Rejected plan

As this marketing strategy was thought to capture new customers, this will just be a one time event whereby students will make their orders during week 2 and collect them on Wednesday (week 3) (since this was the day our group felt was the busiest). However, a few concerns were the tedious process to refund and the low amount of orders reached.

I personally feel that if we attempt to this, it might work out (though not guarantee). As the first week sales solely relied on our own circle of friends, I feel that everyone has to really be ''thick skin'' to approach anyone in school and hard-sell to them for this to work (though not guarantee as well).

Conclusion

Our group eventually concluded to put this proposal on halt and proceed in doing the food-catering event to halls. As of now, we will source for more suppliers and think of ways to value add our business...

Jiayou chop chop!

(P.s I'm still quite in shock but slowly accepting that we have a company now.... )

16/01/2019

Our operation of business has just started this week.

However, as I am doing my internship this semester, I am unable to help out during the lunch hour operation in school.

The sales so far have not been impressive. We have not met any form of break-even and most of our sales are from our own network of friends. While I am glad one of my friend, Jayshree became one of our regular customers, it is a bit disappointing to hear from my other group members that people hardly come by to purchase, not to say, made an order online. This made me thought through the process on how we can proceed in capturing our customer’s attention.

As my current internship is from 0830 to 1730, I have decided to come to school in the evening to help clear out the remaining stock from our sales on Wednesday. Considering that I have a Toastmaster Chapter meeting on Wednesday, I have decided to take the opportunity to promote Chop Chop!’s onigiri. It was indeed a challenging process because I had to carry the box from Eunice’s hall, board the bus and head to Hive. I guess this was the experience my friend had to suffer during the operation for the past 2 days…

As my CCA has a refreshment session at 830pm, I decided to sell my onigiris during this break. I saw this as an opportunity to clear our stock and together with the promotion we had for that day (Buy 1 get 1 free), I manage to sell my onigiris to a few of my friends.

A few observations made:

1. Most purchase were made out of good will.

2. Some bought it for breakfast the next day whereas some thought it was a good supper snack.

3. Some of them were either vegetarian or required the food to be Halal, and this resulted in a lost sale…

At the end of the day, I manage to sell 24 onigiris out of 30. My mom decided to buy the remaining 6 onigiris at $10 and our sales made are as follows:

• 1 purchased it at 3 for $4.00
• 1 purchased it at $1.25
• 11 purchased it at 1 for 1 at $2.50 for 2.
• 6 purchased at $10.

I had a great dilemma on whether to charge it at 1 for 1 at $2.50 for 2 or to charge slightly above $1.25 since $1.25 is our cost price. However, since it was evening (an after sale after afternoon) and our group’s decision to sell it for Buy 1 Get 1 Free, I decided to just quote it at $1.25 each...

It was a long day for me. Considering that many of friends bought it to support Chop Chop, I'm really grateful for their support! THANK YOU FRIENDS!!! :):)

11/01/2019

Over the past two days, I have been editing the videos and here's the two official marketing videos that will be showcase on both social media and the official website. The first one will direct the customers to the location whereas the second video will showcase how to open an onigiri.

11/01/2019

We conducted our food testing today.

Personal thought: The bentos provided did not reflect well as a Japanese bento. Apart from the Teriyaki Chicken, the rest of the bentos felt similar to what Koufu has to offer. While taste was slightly better, we found that the overall outlook might not reflect well on our business as Japanese cuisine. The portions were adequate. However, a few concerns I wish to raise is the bones in the fish. While consuming the bento, I realise there were a few small bones hidden in the fish. This might lead to some safety issue if our customers swallow the bone and choke on them.

On a personal note, I would purchase the bento at $5 if the queues in Koufu continues to be long and crowded. However, if given a choice to choose my food for lunch during the non-peak hour, I would not purchase this bento. One main concern is the outlook of the bento. I believe if we are able to package it to make it look premium, more students would be willing to buy it at a slightly higher price as comapare to Koufu.

Two suggestions discussed to resolve our bento issue are as follows:

1. Opt for alternative food options like Nasi Lemak which Yue Feng has helped to source (but not related to Japanese cuisine)

2. Substitute the bento with a set of chawanmushi with gyoza together with our Onigiri. This idea was suggested by Shurong. One reason we all think this might be a good idea is because base on the surveys, these 3 food items happen to be the popular choices among the students. However, the main issue face here would be the need to handle and ensure the chawanmushi remain warm.

If all choices do not work well, we would just stick to onigiri and have it as our only food item.

10/01/2019

Today was one looooooong day - Physically tiring and mentally drained after walking, filming and (currently) editing the videos.

In the morning, Yue Feng and I had to come to school to shift CHOP CHOP's official refrigerator from one of our fellow MIE course mate, Amber's room to Eunice's room. Thank You Amber for selling the fridge to us! Thank you Eunice for offering her hall to place the bulky fridge!!! The fridge is relatively big - bigger than expected... I guess it should be able to store 120 onigiris for the next day. While we were shifting the refrigerator, Eunice went to collect the banner from town for our filming set up in the afternoon.

While waiting for her to come back, I took the opportunity to take photos of the onigiri at different locations in school. Hopefully, it will turn out well in the video!

02/01/2019

Over the past few weeks, I have been working on creating the website (http://chop-chop.sg/) as well as a few info graphics. As I wanted to create a mascot for our brand identity, I have decided to use Onigiri as an icon (Below, Centre). Without the company's logo or name, I believe this 'mascot' can help to create some form of brand awareness as part of our marketing strategies.

Wordpress

As the food-photo session will commence on 4th January, the info-graphics I created were solely on the ordering system. We have broken down the process into 4 simple steps:

1. Select your order

2. Whatsapp your order.

3. Make payment.

4. Confirmation + Collection

Info-graphics

Depending on how the sales go, we will be creating different theme-posts on our social media or maybe even our site. After doing a few research, I have come out with 2 concepts. We could either opt for a ''quote'' theme (For instance, "Have a rice day!" to update on our social media pages) or we could work on a comic strip whereby we have conversations between onigiris (They could talk about school-related stuff, etc.).

Time is really ticking. The group is sourcing for more food options (for back up) as well as working on the ordering system on whatsapp or telegram. Hope we get everything done, CHOP CHOP!

Today marks our second meeting with our supplier from RE&S. After giving them a short presentation on both the survey results and competitor analysis, the staffs told us that they will work out on both the food menu and the cost breakdown of the food at our given price as well as delivery and packaging. They will then get back to us next week to discuss the pricing of the food quotation, etc.

Despite having a meeting in a business setting, the staffs were very friendly and they even gave us advice on how we can improve our business. For instance, they mention that we should get our orders first before setting an increment to get a more accurate number for our orders.

In the case of liability insurance, we will have to give them our food handling certificates and they, on the other hand, will paste food tags to notify consumers the time limit for food consumption.

Lastly, we have also given them a verbal confirmation that we will be choosing them as our ideal supplier for our business. With that, we hope that we can get everything done as soon as possible.

For now, we are also awaiting for the school's approval for operating our business. As long as they can give us the green light, that will be a huge relief!

New Blog Theme - Other designs for future consideration

26/10/2018

Meeting the supplier

As mentioned in the team blog today, our group has visited RE&S to know more about what they have to offer and also come out with the desired food bento to cater to students in NTU. During our entire discussion, our main objective was to create a distinction between NTU Koufu and what Chop Chop has to offer. As such, we were told by RE&S to scrutinize our competitors. What they hope to get from us were datas which they hope to examine closely. These data would include the type of menu/food options our competitors provide, together with price so that they can use it to gauge the type of ingredients to use in the bento.

On a team's note, we do see two very different target segments - one whereby students would prefer very cheap food and another whereby they would be happy to pay more (but preferably not more than $5.00 as substantiated from the poll we conducted during the MIE class) for premium food. Hence, one of our solution to this is to get rice balls to cater to students who like cheap food and a bento meals to cater to the slightly more "premium" student.

However, one of the main issue right now is the type of bento which we want. Do we want Salmon? or do we want Chicken Teriyaki? or something else? Hence, a survey is required and after fetching the required data, our group hope to meet them asap to settle the type of bento and riceball to sell on the start of next semester, next year.

Food Handling Course

On a side note, our team is also working closely to decide on a date to undertake the course on Food and Beverage Safety and Hygiene Policies and Procedures. As this is required as part of the food-safety guidelines, we are all working together to take up the food-handling course. However, as Eunice is not older than 21 years old, she will not be getting the skillsFuture Funding. Hence, she would have to pay $160.50 instead of $40.50. Hence the team has decided that she will be working on the back-end (eg: Queue handling) instead of the front-end.

As for my case, as I will be the only one interning next semester, I will not be able to be active during the operation of our business. Thus, it was discussed earlier that I will also be working in the back-end. However, I do believe that there will be times when I get offs/leaves. These could therefore allow me to work a few days for our business. Personally, I do hope that Chop Chop would expand. For instance, if it goes well, I could try to expand it to perhaps cater food in my intern company. While this may just be an idea, it is also worth thinking because this could possibly be one of the expansion ideas for Chop Chop.

20/10/2018

After looking at how other groups have presented, I had a sudden realization that we should all have a back up strategy on top of our exit strategy for our business. As quoted in class today,

"If you succeed in a business, you can only thank luck. However if you fail in a business, the only person you can blame is yourself."

This made me realize the need to constantly think of ways to tweak/adapt our current business model to perhaps another industry. While (Touch wood) we definitely do not want our business to fail, one way to prevent this from happening is to seize every opportunity during the entire operation of our business.

For instance, while food may be the main focus in generating our revenue, it is noted that we are also getting a group of followers through social media - an intangible form of return . Hence, not all is lost if we happen to (Touch wood again) fail in the future.

While I am still thinking of how we can develop our business further, I hope to highlight the importance of coming up with a few back up strategies in the early stage of our startup. Hence, if our business (touch wood) fails, we can still utilize other resources which we have to operate another type of business.