Chop Chop! - Team Blog

Entry 23: Completed Our First Event

21 March 2019

We have finally completed our first customer order yesterday. Every thing went smoothly. Our supplier delivered to us the food on time and we passed the food and drinks over to WSC at the ARC. Our point of contact was quite happy with the whole order and even told us that we would probably hear from them very soon as they have another event coming up. Here are some pictures from the event:

Entry 22: MIE Business Showcase

13 March 2019

This MIE journey has taught us to remodel our old business model.

This MIE journey has pushed us to strive even more to sustain our business.

It might be the end of our MIE journey but....

This is only the beginning of Chop Chop Events LLP.

We will continue to source for more food suppliers, clients to sustain our business in the long run. We will continue to strive to help anyone with their budget and preference when it comes to catering food. We are also working on providing tibits and light snacks around NIE. Chop Chop is not done with MIE but Chop Chop is only starting to get things rolling....

Profit & Loss

At the moment, this is the most updated and simplified P&L for what we have done so far. We are aware that the overheads are essential in tabulating the P&L. However, to make it comprehensible, the simplified P&L is as such. After investing $500 each for our working capital, we have made a loss of &1085.08 excluding the overheads which we account for in a separate table. We will try our best to compensate this loss by working towards both the catering services as well as the vending machine.

Customers' Feedback

After going through the first week of Chop Chop's business, we have noted that Pre-Ordering food may seem as a hassle to some of our customers. Considering that the food items we sold were onigiris, the shelf live was long as compared to bentos. As such, students might not see the need in pre-ordering it. We might have failed in taking that into consideration when we conducted the per-ordering system. Together with the location and time factor whereby we sold it during the first week, we might have not accounted for the students who are busy in fighting for their add-drop period and also some of the students were actually not in school. Most of our customers from the first business model are relatively satisfied with the service. However, due to the constraint of our manpower, some suggested longer operating hours.

As for the second ongoing business model, we are currently working with our first customer and as of date, they are satisfied with the prompt reply and the customized menu. We further re-evaluate the situation to restrategize and improve how we operate this catering business in the long run.

Conclusion

Our team has learnt alot and if there is one thing we want to share:

Never give up.

When it's time to let go , let go!

Re strategize!

...and lastly...

Get things done, CHOP CHOP!

Entry 21: Collaboration with Makan Rescue

8 Mar 2019

Today, our team met up with Makan Rescue to discuss an attempt collaboration between our food catering business and Makan Rescue’s vision to help reduce food wastage. Food Makan aims to resolve the food wastage problem by notifying people when there is free food around them. With the help of those in-charge of these events of buffets in school, they will send the notification in the application to reach out to the people around the vicinity with the application. As such, all the excess food will not go to waste.

During the start of our discussion, we exchanged our business ideas and gave feedback on both business model. Makan Rescue did share with us one contact they had which was related to our business. One of which is allforyou, a company which provides a one stop destination for students of any institution in Singapore to use to share events, liaise with food vendors, etc. This was also one of Chop Chop's business strategy to expand in the future. It was a good take-away for us as we are able to have a reference as to how our business can carry out in the long run. Moreover, they also shared another company they know - unigram. Based on what they have shared, Chop Chop has gotten a feel and an idea of who are the potential direct or indirect competitors that Chop Chop might have to deal in the future...

One of the main discussed collaboration plans was for Chop Chop to inform and promote Food Makan to our clients. On the other hand, Makan Rescue will also help to spread Chop Chop’s catering business with people they meet. As the founders of Makan Rescue are from NUS and SMU, they are glad that they have finally met us – representative of NTU. During this short one hour, we also shared a few of our marketing strategies and learnt from one another in this process.

In view of this, we really hope that this collaboration can also value add our branding identity as a company that also prides on eliminating food wastage. It was a good meet-up and we hope that this collaboration can sustain in the long-run as this will benefit both of us in the future. 😊

JIAYOU CHOP CHOP and MAKAN RESCUE!

Entry 20: First catering customer

6 Mar 2019

We have been busy reaching out to student clubs and event organisers in NTU for potential customers. We were in negotiations with a few of them and there has been quite a few responses expressing their interest to work with us to cater food for their events.

1) WSC bonding day

This is our first confirmed customer after switching to our new business model! They expressed interest to cater snacks for their event happening in mid March. Our team had prepared the proposal which included the caterer we've identified that will suit their needs, the price that we will be charging them and also the qty that they need.

We had provided a few menu for them to choose from and they had chosen a menu and have agreed to the price we quoted them. During the negotiations, they had made a mistake in their event's number of participants and asked us if they could change the qty. We quickly did up a new proposal for them which they later agreed on and we eventually issued them the invoice. They even praised us for our efficiency and said they looked forward to working with us more in the future! Good job Chop Chop!

2) CAC Club event and SoH event

Another event that we were in talks to cater for was an event by CAC for a buffet for their appreciation dinner. They had turned down our proposal that we offered to them and had offered their own reasons for doing so. However, we were keen to find out more and we did up a survey form that we intend to send to them and also future parties we work with. We crafted this survey form as a way of collecting feedback and hope to send it to both the events that rejected us and also the events which we have successfully catered for so they can give us some areas of improvement. Hopefully, we can steadily improve and better cater to the needs of our customers.

Entry 19: Updated Value Proposition

28 Feb 2019

Our team had a good talk about our value proposition. We knew that we were just the middlemen and our customers could easily just bypass us and order from the suppliers directly. It was important that we could add value. Other than having added on services like helping event organisers have a fuss free experience of getting caterers for their event, we also decided that we should not be charging a premium on top of the regular price the suppliers were charging. Doing so would likely encourage customers to bypass us instead. What we decided to do was to get a negotiated lower price from our suppliers and then charge our customers at a price lower than what the suppliers were publicly selling.

We build value to our suppliers by promising to recommend them to future customers and in exchange they would give us a discount. Of course if they gave us a deeper discount, we will more likely recommend them. On the customer side, we will be able to pass on a portion of these discounts to them. The initial execution for this could be tricky for us. Suppliers may not believe our promise and may not offer us discounts on the first order. Hence we decided that it would be ok even if we did not earn any profits and charged our customers the cost price for our first orders from that supplier. Our main goal is to foster a long term relationship with the suppliers so that they would be willing to give us deep discounts in the future. By continually adding more suppliers and getting feedback from our customers, we hope to ultimately come up with a few cheap and good suppliers.

Entry 18: Meeting @ Hive

25 Feb 2019

To put everyone on the same page and also meet up to find solutions to some current problems we have, we held a meeting at Hive today. Here are some conclusions about today's meeting

1. A skype meeting will be held sometime this week. We will be going through the presentation slides and ensure that each of our parts are coherent and there are no gaps or overlapping points

2. In light of our customers potentially bypassing us and ordering directly from the suppliers, we plan to charge our customers at the same price and try to negotiate a lower price with our suppliers after multiple orders so that in the future, we can pass on some of these cost savings to customers & customers won't get such low prices if they approach the supplier directly.

3. We did up a google form that we will use to send to all our customers. As we will have standard enquries to ask our customers before we can start to help them source for caterers.

https://goo.gl/forms/HKXEBerL5VIpJjSB2

4. We need to do up a standard menu with all our food products that we will be sending to our customers. We will then customise it if required to the customer's specifications and budgets.

5. The NTU open house event was discussed and we felt that it was not suitable to proceed with selling Onigiris there due to various reasons. One of the more important reasons being that many of the school management may be present at the event and our presence will be questioned if we are not authorized to sell food there.

Jiayous Chop Chop !!

Entry 17: Updates

24 Feb 2019

We had to pass on the opportunity to supply hall 6's CNY event due to us not being able to settle the invoicing issue in time. We took too long to register our LLP with ACRA. Due to this, we missed the wave of back to school/CNY events that we could have supplied for.

However, we are still working with Banyan hall to supply them for orientation in Aug. We are in talks for a few meals that they will be having. Since the orientation programme will span a few days, they wanted us to help them with their breakfast, lunch and dinner menus. They had given several requirements and budgets and we are in the middle of discussions. They needed breakfast snacks, packed meals for lunch and also buffets for finale night. The past few weeks, all of our members were searching for different suppliers that would be able to fit their budget (which was quite low) but we have found suppliers for many of them and are seeing whether Banyan would be ok with them. Some of these suppliers were quite low priced and would also be great for other events that we may have.

Another hall that approached us was Binjai Hall. They expressed interest in getting 200 Onigiris for one of their events. We had an agreement on the price and we are waiting for their side to get approval for their event proposal before they formally put in an order. In the mean time, it is quite a lull period as there aren't many events that required food. Hopefully, we will be able to secure some deals for events in the 2nd half of the semester.

We had also approached NTC to let us supply food for the presentation night and we found out about the Ariba system that the school uses. School departments have to look for vendors on the Ariba system to supply food for their events. Thus, we have set up an account on Ariba to look for any potential events we could do. However, there also doesn't seem to be many events that would require our services.

Right now, all of our members are also quite busy, having to juggle mid-terms, internship interviews that all of us are required to do in the coming summer break, attending entrepreneurship events for our reflective report and also preparing for the business showcase presentation. What we have done is to network at these entrepreneurship events to see whether fellow entrepreneurs would be willing to work with us or introduce us to any events. Hopefully it can produce some results.

Jiayou Chop Chop!

Entry 16: Skype Call

3 Feb 2019

As times passes, our group needs to establish a plan for both the event side and the daily operation side. To allow things to move faster, we have decided for the group to be further broken down into 2 sub groups, with 2 (eunice/ yue feng) on the events side and 3 (Alvin/ Kai Xiang/ Shu Rong) on the daily operation side.

For the events side, we had been liasing with hall 6 and Banyan hall to allow them to give us the deal to manage their food for their event.

For the operations side, we will need to decide quickly if we should continue operations on week 5 becuase if we need then we will need to order by week 4 to allow the order to arrive for week 5. However, there are many factors to consider before we can come to a decision, as the demand is low for Onigiri, we had to pivot our selling method and marketing methods to ensure that we can sell our Onigiri.

On the other hand, we will be working with My ad friend to further market our brand in NTU. Alvin will be liaising with Jing Yue from Myadfriend to push out this initiative for the students to know more about chop chop !

In sight of the presentation on 13 March, we have also planned to contact NTC to allow them to let us handle their catering for us that night. We will also be starting to prepare our slides as mid terms will be approaching and we will be too busy to produce a good set of slides by then.

Jiayous Chop Chop !!

Entry 15: Change In Business Model

18 Jan (End of week 1)

It is now the end of week 1 and including fixed costs, chop chop had made a loss of $500. We had to act and make bold moves in order to minimize our losses for the coming week. We had a skype call at 1030pm and these were our minutes.

Issue 1: Reduction of MOQ and increasing the shelf life of products

After liaising with our suppliers, they have decided to extend the shelf life of the Onigiris by 1 day and also reduce the MOQ to 100 for us.

Issue 2: Ordering for week 2

This was one of the most daunting problems that we faced during the meeting. It was really difficult for us to decide if we should carry on operations on week 2. We did have some disagreements but we knew that we had to avoid an impasse to allow the conversation to carry on. After an hour of discussion we decided that Chop Chop! will not carry on operation at the Hive to sell Onigiris from week 2 onwards. A few reasons being:

1. Much of sales were of low quality, i.e. supported by friends/ friends of friends which is not sustainable.

2. Even though the MOQ is reduced to 100, we were not confident that we will be able to sell 33 a day. Furthermore in the second week, low quality sales will fall drastically and we will need to depend on cold sales completely. Even if we sell all 100, we could barely break-even.

3. More losses will quickly deplete our financials and it would be even more difficult for us to pivot by then.

However, we also realised that stopping our operations at hive could bring us these problems too:

1. The brand chop chop! could be affected as social media will no longer be updated and students who genuinely want to buy our onigiri will not be able to buy them anymore.

2. Building of the awareness and brand will also be wasted.

Issue 3: How to move on from here?

Now that we are not selling Onigiri's anymore, it is very important for us to set our plans in the right directions to ensure that we do not make any wrong move anymore. After discussion, we have decided to move towards catering to event based activities such as camps or one off meals that departments wishes to have.

This was an idea we came up with during one of the days we were operating at the Hive. We reached out to NTU Hall councils and student organisations asking whether they would be interested in catering Onigiris for their events. We soon realised that there could possibly be a market for not just Onigiri, but packed meals like bento sets. 2 of the organisations got back to us and immediately wanted to place orders for 100-200 pax each for their events. We felt that this could be a possible way for us to pivot our operations as our main goal in the first place was to bring in bento sets after the Onigiris. However, without an established brand, it may be difficult to persuade and clinch more of such deals. As such we will be approaching more school bodies to work together.

Issue 4: Invoice Issue

As chop chop is not officially registered under the registrar of ACRA as a legitimate business entity, we faced a problem where many of these school organisations wanted to purchase from us but were unable to as they would require a official receipt to do claiming and other works. We are currently working on this issue and finding alternative solutions. However in the event that we cannot find any, we might have to register under ACRA in order to produce the invoices required by the school. We will be blogging on the progress of this issue in the next entry.

Issue 5: Initializing our new business model

We will be looking for more suppliers on top of customers as we would like to provide our customers with a greater variety of food options when they want to order with us. Currently on hand, we only have suppliers for Japanese cuisines such as Bentos and Onigiri, Lei Cha, and Boon Lay's Power Nasi Lemak.

The group will also continue to expand our search for more customers to allow us have a higher probability of clinching a deal.

JIAYOUS CHOP CHOP !!!

Entry 14: Skype Call (Crisis Management)

15 Jan 2019 (Day 2)

Last night we had a skype call to decide our moves to the business as chop chop is currently facing many issue with the current business model.

Our sales from the first 2 days is not good. We have only manage to sell 70 Onigiris out of the 240 that we have ordered, giving the remainder out for free as we decided not to waste the food. In light of that, our group called for an emergency meeting last night to think of ways to solve the crisis ahead. As the orders for today and tomorrow have already been placed, we will be having 240 more Onigiris coming in today. We have spoke to RE&S who was willing to increase the expiry date by 1 day till friday, giving us more room for sale.

We will also be deploying aggressive sales promotion such as buy 1 get 1 free to attract customers and boost initial sales for Chop Chop! We are aware that this is not a long term solution and hence, we have also plans to decrease our ordering quantity and days of operations to reduce our loses. We will vote and decide if we should stick to the current business model or pivot and move towards a different one such as catering for school events only.

Should we continue operations in week 2, we will reduce our operation days to 3 and also decrease our order to 50 a day as we will still have to hit the minimum ordering quantity. However, if we choose to cease operations, we will execute our exit strategy partially by ceasing all orders and also cut our marketing efforts to sell in the school. We will re-evaluate after seeing the sales results for week 1.

Entry 13: Bento Food Testing

11 Jan 2019 (3 Days to Launch)

We conducted our bento food testing today. The staffs from RE&S prepared a total of 5 flavors for us to try.

A few observations noted were as follows:

Portion was decent. Both the side dishes and meat were adequate. The rice portion was more than sufficient.

However, base on appearance, we found that the meat on the bento was not as appealing as we want it to be. The discoloration of the broccoli made it unappealing too. Base on taste, we found the broccoli to be a bit soggy. The staffs did mention that they will work on the broccoli and promise to help resolve this issue. On a side note, the combination of the sauce and rice was not bad.

One suggestion proposed from RE&S was that we can beautify the package by adding a bow or ribbon to wrap around the centre of the bento. This might boost the perceived value of the bento .

The group was not really satisfied with what RE&S has to offer. We found the price a bit high and given the current outlook of the bento, we are unsure if we want to move forward by using their bento. The doubt right now is whether there will be demand during operation. If we will have to move on with the bento, we might have to come out with strategies to repackage the whole bento. However, it would mean an added cost...

As for now, we have decided to focus on our onigiri. The bento meals might come into play after Chinese New Year. For now, let's hope Monday will bring in good sales!

JIAYOU CHOP CHOP!

Ingredients in Bento Box

Bento Box

Bento Box with lid

Entry 12: Food Tasting, Photo Taking

4 Jan 2019 (10 Days to Launch)

Today marks our 4th visit to RE&S. We went to collect the onigiris and conducted our first official food testing. We were given 5 flavors - Salmon, Salmon Tar Tar, Tuna, Unagi and Chicken Teriyaki. We are in favor of both the chicken teriyaki and tuna. However, we had different opinions in regards to choosing either the salmon or salmon Tar Tar. Some of us found the salmon too dry while others prefer the taste and texture. In the end, we concluded to take Salmon instead of Salmon Tar Tar because both Tuna and Chicken Teriyaki already have sauces in them.

We are also currently working on the food-photo-shoot. If all goes well, the photos should be able to complete by end of this week.

Food testing for the bento will be conducted either next week or following week. After the food testing, the bentos may kick in after Chinese New Year.

Our team are still having a dilemma of either working on one cuisine - to focus selling onigiri and bentos or more than one - by selling other cuisines such as Nasi Lemak, etc.

We are also working on improving our ordering process. Hope the commencement of our business will be smooth.

JIAYOU CHOP CHOP!

Entry 11: Group Meeting

30 Dec 2018 (16 Days to Launch)

In today's meeting, we have managed to confirm quite a few issues regarding the business. The points are summarised as below

Confirmation

Date of Launch - 14 Jan 2019
Flavors - Chicken, Tuna, Salmon
Quantity - 150 daily
Price - $2.50 each
Location - Hive far corner
Confirmation of ordering system and processes - Whatsapp (Telegram bot creation in progress)
Payment system - Paylah only
Food wastage protocols (Give away to friend, Take home, Throw away)

Marketing Plans/ Strategies

Buy 4 get 1 free promotion (First 2 weeks tentatively)
Influencer (Giving her onigiris as a form of promotion) - number to be confirmed but 10 at the moment
Giving out free onigiri to the first # customers, the number is to be confirmed
Festive season promotion

Operation Logistics

Sticker, Banner, Table Cloth to be purchased before 14 Jan

Financing

All capital is already injected, now we can begin disbursing the expenses and start the operations.

-Payment to suppliers - estimated weekly payments ($1.25*150*4+$40*4)

Jiayou Chop Chop !

Entry 10: Sourcing alternative supplier

18 Dec 2018 (28 Days to launch)

Current Situation
With the nearing dates to our operation, RE&S has yet to give us a confirmation on whether they will provide us with the bentos. Despite giving us a verbal confirmation on onigiri, it is noted that the high delivery cost on Onigiri alone would result in a loss in our business. Hence, we have decided to reassess the situation.
Current Problem with RE&S (Onigiri and Bento respectively)
Minimum quantity and cost for Onigiri is unknown.
Expected lead time for stickers will be around 1 to 1.5 months.
Availability for bento is unknown.
Expected lead time for food testing is 3 weeks.
Date that we know: Unknown
Our new potential supplier (Food Hunt Stories)
As a back up plan, our team decided to conduct a food hunt for new suppliers at the Jurong West hawker center. While many stores rejected us due to their lack of manpower to cope with our demand, one store in particular has given us a verbal affirmation to charge as 50 cents less their selling price. This store is the Ke Jia Lei Cha store. As their store is newly open, they are open to business opportunities and are willing to collaborate with us during the school term.
Our new plans (food combinations)
Plan A
Bento + Onigiri
Plan B
Lei Cha + Onirigi
Plan C
Lei Cha
Plan D
Onigiri
Worst Case Scenario (Talks with Re&S unsuccessful)
In the case when RE&S has decided to withdraw their plans, we have thought of another alternative - To collaborate with Ke Jia Lei Cha store to sell healthy green soup and rice. In this case, we will have to re-evaluate our target audience and come out with a different marketing strategy to cater to health-conscious customers instead of focusing solely on providing convenience to students during lunch-peak-hours
Counting down to launch : 28 days
Possible new market (Cleaner Contractors)
While we were discussing our new alternative business plan, we also notice many cleaners around the school. One of the ideas shared was to sell cheap lunch packages to these cleaners. This will therefore provide an additional profit for our business and also allow us to help these cleaners to obtain cheaper food instead of having the inconvenience to bring their own lunch-box.

Despite all these being said, we still hope that Plan A will work out successfully. If not, given the current back up plan, we can say that we are still confident that our business will still be able to operate! Hope all goes well.

JIAYOU CHOP CHOP! :D

Entry 9: Consultation 1

8 Dec 2018

We have voiced concern regarding SAO's rejection on our idea of selling the food at the concourse at south spine and our idea of pivoting according. It seemed that we can pivot according to selling food but on a pre order basis without any physical presence in school.

We have decided that we will have 2 menus for the students in the coming semester. Both menu will alternate in the 4 days weeks to serve the students. Our menu will contain both Bentos and Onigiris to give the students a wider variety of choices. The Menu is shown on the left. The menu will be proposed to RE&S, our supplier and we will be waiting for their reply to confirm the menu with us.

We have also thought of a new idea which is to sell the food in advance in the form of meal plans to student so that we can secure sales in advance before operation during the coming semester. This serves as a safety net for us to estimate sales and also have more cash flows for operation purposes. The idea was operational but needed much planning which included how we could manage these vouchers, how do we provide priority for these students and also how to mark out their purchase when they ordered from us. Currently, we are marking our food plans at the prices as seen on the right.

We have confirmed our operating ours to be 1230-1300 from Mondays to Thursdays. We have adjusted our studying hours to suit the operating hours of chopchop. We have anticipated for any delay in timing that might occur because of such situations and hence we will be ready from 12 onwards to receive the food from our suppliers.

Food wastage is a critical issue that we must consider due to the nature of our business. Initially, we have decided to close the preordering system at 1230 to prevent confusion. However stopping the sales of food at 1230 will meant that we will have no chance of selling unsold food. As such we have decided to open the ordering system daily until food is sold out.

Ordering/ Inventory management is also a key concern and that issue is currently under discussion from our group members. We will blog a solid plan upon confirmation of the ordering system.

Menu A (Mondays/ Wednesdays)

Unagi Bento Set - $5

Terriyaki Chicken Bento Set - $4

Grilled Salmon Onigiri - $2.50

Tamago Onirigi - $2

Menu B (Tuesdays/ Thursdays)

Mackerel Bento Set - $5

Ebi Tempura Bento Set - $4

Grilled Salmon Onigiri - $2.50

Tamago Onirigi - $2

Food Plan

Onigiri Plan - $8

Contains 5 Onirigis claimable in 1 month

Bento Plan - $18

Contains 5 Bento sets claimable in 1 month

Entry 8: Group Meeting

6 Dec 2018

SAO News

An unfortunate news hit us as the SAO have once again rejected our idea of selling onigiris. However the reason that they had provided seem to suggest that we cannot sell any food items in general at the concourse as it seems to be in direct competition with the food vendors at Koufu.

After discussion, we have decided to do a minor pivoting with the operation method since SAO seems to be against us selling food at the Concourse and not any particular food per se. We are considering the following options. These methods will allow us to not require approval from the school itself since we will not have any physical presence in the campus.

1. Selling on pure consignment

By consigning our products to the food vendors at the south spine or the hive, we will be able to reduce our manpower and remove the rental expenses. This meant that we will not have anymore physical presence and sales will depend solely on online marketing. However, this model of business will meant that we will have to incur significant commission expenses.

2. Selling online but consign distribution

We will also have the option to sell online and consign our distribution to the vendors. Meaning students will order and pay online, and then collect from the express queue at hive for example. This will allow us to cut man power, but will also mean that a verification system needs to be put in place and our distributor needs to be aware of this.

3. Selling online and set up collection point to distribute

Our last option to pivot is to be completely online, students will order and make payment online. They will then collect their lunch at a stipulated timing that they have previously selected. We will also provide a number to allow call in for larger orders. For orders more than a certain amount, we can consider providing free delivery within the vicinity of NBS. This method will mean that manpower will be required and we will have to expense overheads to execute this plan.

We will be discussing these plans with Prof Roderick on Saturday to get advise on the most suitable model to pivot towards to ensure flexibility.

We will also be revising our operating hours accordingly to our timetable. We might be considering reducing our operating hours to 1230 to 1330. Keeping the operating days the same at 4 days per week.

JIAYOU CHOP CHOP! :D

Entry 7: 3rd RE&S meeting

6 Dec 2018

RE&S is now aware that SAO had rejected our proposal for selling Bentos in school. We are now proposing our second alternative which is Onigiri. Today, we were shown the Onigiris that RE&S can offer and the price points.

RE&S highlighted that they would like to work with us in the long term and hopes to know our business model (if it is sustainable & scalable). They would like to knowour business model and the cost that we want to get the onigiris for.

Currently, we are waiting for the SAO to approve the onigiri idea. Once approved, we will be able to inform RE&S of our cost price and our ordering quantity. On another hand, we will be able to design marketing tools to advertise our products.

JIAYOU CHOP CHOP! :D

Sample of an Onigiri

The menu for Onigiri

Entry 6: 2nd RE&S Meeting

15 Nov 2018

After collating all the survey data of our customer's food preference and price point, we have presented them to our suppliers. At first glance, they were slightly taken aback by the price quoted from students. For instance, the lowest price quoted for a bento was around $3.00.

However, after knowing that there is a huge supply of students who queue at Koufu during lunch peak hours as well as the demand for Japanese cuisine which is substantiated from our surveys, they were glad to work out the cost analysis to meet to our cost range. Moreover, they will also work out the break down of the food cost, packaging and delivery etc.

If all goes well, they will present us the price quote next week and if we are happy with the price, the food testing will take place after another 2 to 3 weeks. Hopefully, the time schedule is not too tight!!

JIAYOU CHOP CHOP! :D

Entry 5: 1st Meeting the supplier (RE&S)

27 Oct 2018

According to our surveys, we have identified that Japanese cuisine is one of the most popular food options which students crave for lunch. Hence, we decided that RE&S, a Japanese leading food service company would fit the bill.

Today, our team visited RE&S, and we managed to understand more about what they have to offer. We sat down to share with them our business idea and they also went through with us the selection of food they offer. One of their main concerns was whether we would white label their product. Due to the fact that they will be doing several food testings, they hope to gain some recognition from it.

However, from the team's perspective, we hope to brand our Chop Chop not just in terms of service but also the food we offer. While they did suggest us to focus more on the service which we provide rather than the product, our team would still prefer to have the food under Chop Chop's brand.

Moreover, one of their other concerns was also the type of Bento which we would be working for our project. As both our team and RE&S want to ensure a great distinction between what Koufu and us are going to sell, they wanted us to do a more thorough study on our competitor's analysis and also the kind of ingredients we would want in our bento.

As for now, our team will be working on creating another survey - this time, a survey to allow our customers to choose their preferred Bento in reference to what RE&S has to offer. We will then study the results and meet RE&S again to come out with the ideal bento for an ideal price and then continue to work from there...

JIAYOU CHOP CHOP! :D

Entry 4: Business Report Presentation

20 Oct 2018

Today, our team presented our business idea to the other teams in class and conduted a poll to find out the receptiveness of our business. The poll conducted has greatly facilitated our understanding of the pricing strategies that we should undertake.

Before the poll was undertaken, we were unsure about the pricing strategy that we should undertake as the food we are looking to offer is of more premium quality. On top of that, due to the different operation style than the vendors in NTU (i.e. Chop Chop! revolves a takeaway concept), we are uncertain about the prices that the students are willing to pay. As such, the poll results gathered has allowed us to have a rough gauge of the price that students are willing to pay and it has definitely value-add our negotiation with our supplier which is about to take place next week.

In our case, since food supply price plays a great role in our pricing strategy and profit margins, we would have to discuss with the potential suppliers to see if there is anything we can work out.

Entry 3: Operational Plans

18 Oct 2018

Today, our group had a discussion regarding the operation plans of Chop Chop! We have arrived at the following operation plan as follows.

Daily operation of Chop Chop!

10 am– Team will review volume of online preorders, inform supplier of additional order if necessary.

11am- Our suppliers are expected to start delivering the food supplies reach us at approximately 11.45pm.

12pm - Chop Chop! will commence operation and online preorders will be closed.

1. Online orders will reviewed at 10am.

Justification

The cut-off time may be pushed earlier as suppliers may require more time in order to prepare the food in advance and deliver it on time. However, as of now, 10am would be the preferred time as it ensures that we are able to maximise the orders we can potentially meet on a daily basis.

2. Orders to expected to be prepared by 11am.

Justification

As we take into account of time required to transport the food, depending on the location of the supplier, food is expected to be prepared by 11am. Something we may have to consider is that the duration the food can be kept after preparation, especially with regards to NEA regulations.

3. Our store will operate based on 2 queues – one for online orders and the other for walk-ins.

Justification

This is to ensure that people who opt for online orders continued to experience the faster queue and hassle-free of collection of food. This is mainly because the walk-in queue is likely to experience a slightly slower moving queue as they are still required to make virtual payment on the spot.

4. Online orders will be closed at 12pm

Justification

Due to the lack of real-time inventory tracking system, this is to ensure that we have sufficient stocks to accommodate both walk-ins and online order customers.

An example scenario will be:

In the case where there is only one in-stock left and a walk-in customer and an online customer ordered simultaneously, we would not be able to accommodate to both at the same time. It would be unfair and inappropriate for us to decline the walk-in customer’s purchase and at the same time we would require real-time inventory tracking systems in place to ensure that the online orders can be met. Since real-time inventory tracking system would require additional capital (if done through automation) and/or manpower (if done manually), we would have to close the online orders before 12pm.

Entry 2: Supplier Search

15 Oct 2018

Throughout the week, the teams have been going online and offline, approaching friends and family that are currently in the F&B business to enquire about the things needed to start the business.

We went to source for the cheapest online caterers to have a sense of the cost of goods that we will be expecting when we commence operations. We compared them and listed down a few potential caterers that we can approach. We will wait for the schools approval to proceed with the confirmation of food supply from these vendors.

Our survey research have also shown that students will not mind paying more for good quality food.

We do have plans to approach well known food suppliers such as sushi express or QQ rice to bring in alternatives for NTU students. However we will only explore further after the school's confirmation

Entry 1: Primary Research

8 Oct 2018

We visited south spine for lunch at 12.30pm to have a feel of what a typical student will face everyday when their buying lunch during lunch peak hours. We walked around Koufu to look for alternative locations where we can set up a stall to serve food to students.

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