About Me

WSC Event

Our first event with WSC FOC went smoothly! The Chairperson of WSC FOC mentioned that he was satisfied with our service and collaboration and hope to work with us again in future.

With this, I hope that our first successful client will lead to more in future! As of now, we will be doing follow-ups regarding the event in terms of seeking for more in-depth feedback. At the same time, we will also be brushing up the Marketing efforts in terms of the visuals to be posted on our social media platforms as portfolio.

That is how our boxes supplied to WSC FOC looked like!

Vending Machines at NIE

Today Alvin sent a screenshot of an email from NIE saying that my team is offered the agreement to situate vending machines around NTU. What a great news. However, while we are offered the agreement, there are still many area of concerns that we have to discuss as a team.

In this case, our team would have to review the content of the contract offered by NIE and our vendor to assess the feasibility and viability of the project in short term as well as in long term.

WSC Event

2 days left to WSC’s event. Today, WSC made a sudden request to shift the event timing to 5.30 p.m., which was 1.5 hour earlier than the initial plan. This request Thankfully, with quick response from Polar’s side, we were able to shift the appointment timing forward. We hope to accommodate as much as possible.

With this, I have made some amendments to the initial flow of events.

This will be the flow of our events:

5pm: reach Lee Wee Nam loading bay with jelly joy from hall + invoice, inked chop, inked signature and paid stamp or written on invoice.

5.15pm: deliver goods to Jimmy

5.30-6 pm: take pics of event, ask for feedback, ask for future events etc

As I update the flow of events on our Telegram chat to pin it, I notice that for any business plan, it is important to be meticulous in what you do. More specifically, I noticed that it is good to always explicity list out what needs to be done and not assume that other members are aware of what to do. This help to reduce miscommunication internally and hiccups on the event day itself. In the case of Chop Chop!, it is good to have a detailed checklist so that we can allocate individual team members to bring the various item and collectively, as a team, it ensures that we have covered everything that needs to be done.

Confirmation of WSC event details with Kenneth

Today I have spoken to Kenneth again to double confirm on the events outline and assure him that there is no follow-up actions that he have to do.

Essentially, the fuss-free experience and service is what we aim to provide and we hope that the little follow-up actions from him will entice him to engage us again in the near future.

Internal confirmation of WSC event details

Internally, as it is Chop Chop!’s first event together, I have went forward to draft our a simple timeline for this event.

This will be the flow of our events:

5.45 pm: Collect jelly joy from hall with invoice and paid stamp etc

6 pm:Reach Lee Wee Name loading bay

6.45 pm: Deliver goods to Kenneth

7 -7.30 pm: Take pics of event, ask for feedback, ask for future events etc

Personally, I feel that having a timeline drafted out and announced in our Telegram keeps everyone updated and on track regarding the flow of the event. This helps to ensure that there is minimal hiccups and helps us to visualise and plan for the flow of preparations that needs to be done on the day itself as we allocate manpower for the day.

Today marks the big day of ET9135 as we presented our business showcase at Lee Wee Nam Library. Looking back, I really feel that our team has grown tremendously and I am really proud that Chop Chop! is one of the remaining survivors of the tedious one year module. As we share and listen to the learning progress of other groups, I am glad that I took up ET9135 as it has definitely made my years in NTU more fruitful that it should have been.

Interview with NTC

We were thankful and honoured to chosen as one of the interviewees with NTC. During our sharing, we noticed that the interviewer was really keen in our initial business operation as she personally feel for the problems we have identified which is the long queue during peak hours. However, she was unable to find us as we have stopped operating after a week to move on to an improved business model. She later commended us for registering for Ariba as it was a resourceful platform to tap into, especially if we intend to supply for NTU events. Hearing from her, made me felt really heartened and I believe this will drive me to work even harder for Chop Chop!.

Collection of Jelly Joy

After the business showcase, life carry on as our team continues to hustle! I collected Jelly Joys that were prepared for WSC event and stored them in my hall as we get ready for the upcoming event.

Tomorrow will mark the end of my journey in Minor in Entrepreneurship as I presented the business showcase. It has definitely been a long journey as a student entrepreneur as we have undertaken this project for a whole year. This MIE journey has taught me several things beyond tutorial rooms and have granted me a few priceless friendships. Looking back, I remembered how lost my team was at the start of ET9135, brainstorming about ideas and strategies to make our business plan feasible and sustainable in the long run. Entrepreneurship is definitely not an easy task, what’s more making a profitable business within a short 6 months. However, looking at where my team is today, I believed every team member has grown tremendously and has taken away one thing or two.

For myself, I have taken away so many valuable lessons and skills that cannot be simply put down into words in a blog post. As the Marketing Director of the company, I have to put in a lot of effort to learn effective marketing strategies since I came from an Accounting background. I must say, it has been a period of trial and errors as I have to learn the marketing strategies that calls out to the audience. More importantly, I learn to be not be afraid to ask for external parties’ opinion. This is mainly because their voice is more important since they are the main people viewing your content. If they are not attracted or even wavered by your content, your hard work translates to nothing. On top of that, having the opportunity to pioneer a business has also allowed me to learn business management from all aspects as I often have to go beyond my assigned roles to progress the business. In essence, I am glad that we have pioneered a business and was able to improve on it. The business showcase marks my ET9135 journey with my team and I am glad to be able to share our success and failures from managing Chop Chop! with other aspiring entrepreneurs.

Today, I have went forward to connect with School of Social Science’s orientation camp chairman. As they were uncomfortable with sharing their budget for their meals, it was hard for us to craft out a proposal for them as most of our proposals are designed specially based on customers’ budget, needs and requirement. Since they usually do not cater meals to their participants, I believe they have a relatively tight budget for meals for them. With this, I went forward to send out a few proposals that we have previously send out with a special note that adjustments and negotiations are possible. Hopefully one of our proposal calls out to them. From this, I have learned a few points.

1. Having specially designed proposals may reduce our efficiencies.

While having specially designed proposals may allow us to reach out to customers' needs. However, to increase and improe on our efficiencies in the future, especially to meet higher demands, it may be good for us to have a fixed set of drafted proposals that are subjected to customisation so that we can respond to customers even quickly.

2. It is always important to study the characteristic of your customer

From ths outreach to SSS, I realised that different customers have different budgets which are msostly affected by their circumstances. During your outreach programme, it may be good for you to speak to them and understand their needs and situation before you attempt to send them your existing proposals. Only when you understand in deeper details what your customer is looking for, then you can able to provide for them.

Today, Chop Chop! has managed to secure our first business after our business model. I must say, it is definitely a milestone for us after executing our previous business model. I hope this is a start to more business!

From our first successful collaboration, there are a few takeaways that I have personally gained:

1. We may have online platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to help us reach out to people. However, at initial stages of operation, it is always more effective to establish trust and support from your circle of network.

I first connected with Kenneth through a friend as I was trying to reach out to different CCAs who are managing events. With a little luck, Chop Chop! was lucky to catch WSC before their next small event which was their bonding day. This has also helped us to secured our first business.

2. Always be flexible and adaptive

There are a few occasions where Kenneth has raised a few requests and made a few changes to his initial request. Personally, I learnt that as long as the requests are not out of our capabilities, we should always try to fulfil them as these requests are essentially elements that make your business stand out from others and are things that your customers value when receiving a service. In this case, our team’s efficiency in responding to his request has also been recognized and praised by him personally.

3. If you do not receive any response, always do follow-ups. This helps you to secure your business and also prevent hiccups in execution.

After a few days of acknowledging the invoice, Kenneth did not make any payment or updates regarding his event. As such, I went to send a follow-up message to double confirm his interest and realise that he has some other concerns in mind. In this case, he required a ‘PAID’ chop to verify the payment in order for him to claim from the organization. Even though it was just a small item, we were thankful that we approached him earlier and was able to prepare beforehand. This is because I believed that every little difference can improve a customers’ journey and convert them into a repeated customer.

With these, we have placed order from our supplier, Polar. Hopefully, our event on 20^thMarch with Kenneth will be a successful one!

Today as I was speaking to Kenneth through Whatsapp, I noticed that we did not offer an option for payment period. Previously when Banyan Hall approached us, they have requested for credit line and this collaboration with Kenneth made me realise that maybe during the choice of payment method should be raised to our customers in our standard procedure. I noticed that this may be an issue as Kenneth was taking quite awhile to get back to us regarding the payment and I thought it may be due to the payment offered by us. And so, I raised this concern to the team through Whatsapp.

Through our Whatsapp discussion, we noticed that there are be 3 possible payments namely:

1. Payment in advance
2. Cash on Delivery
3. Credit Line

From our discussion, we have decided that Chop Chop! at its initial stages should at least attempt to promote payment in advance due to our limited capital in hand. At least for now, we are unable to provide credit line as there is no cash flow and to discourage it, we may propose a slightly higher rate for the prolonged payment. In essence, we would first propose for payment in advance so that we have cash flow and will be able to make payment to our suppliers. Should there be a request for other payment choices, we will have to handle it on a case-by-case basis.

Social Media Updates

Yesterday, I have also put up some postings on Instagram and Facebook. I was so engrossed with doing outreach that social media updates has slipped out of my mind. I have came up with an Instagram post quite awhile back to promote our change in business model. However, I was reluctant to post it online as not having a stable pool of suppliers made me felt like I was making an empty promise to the consumers out there. However, now that things have stablised and Chop Chop! has a ready pool of suppliers, I could confidently update our social media platforms. The first picture was created before we had confirmed suppliers and the second and third pictures were posted today to announce our return to our customers.

Client: WSC FOC

On top of that, I have also sent a copy of the revised invoice (based on 70 pax) to WSC FOC and will be waiting for them to make payment before my team proceed to order from our supplier.

Client: WSC FOC

This morning, I woke up with a message from WSC FOC saying that he would like to go ahead with option 3 in our proposal! That was the best news so far since it is our first confirmed order ever since we changed our business model. This clinched deal got me going for the whole day. Later during the discussion, we noticed that the invoice has another requirement for school claims which is the stamp! Thankfully, we are able to quickly and easily get a customised company stamp from popular. Like the one shown in the first picture.

Later in the evening, our team faced a minor change in events. There was a drop in number of participants from WSC FOC from 100 to 70. This drop translate a drop in profit and even revenue which got our team to discuss if we should increase the price per pax. After some discussion within our group, we decided to increase the price by $0.10, which is still within their budget. Through this incident, I noticed that people are not so concerned about the price increase as long as it is still within their budget. Of course, this does not mean that we should operate in such a manner that we hijack their financials but I believe this is something we should bear in mind when crafting the proposal so that we can have a price margin to work about in a similar situation.

Client: CAC

Also, CAC has declined our proposal and decided to go ahead with their previous caterer. From their feedback we received, we learn that it was due to the committees’ preference to stick to their previous caterer. As for this, I believe there is some work for our team to do - to shift their preference and to entice them to engage us.

MyAdFriend

MyAdFriend has also proceed with marketing our business in halls. As of now, Hall 1 has already posted on their social media platform! Regarding the effectiveness of this strategy, we are still relatively unsure. However, never try never know! Hopefully, we get some business in return. If not, it will be a good lesson on learning what works and what doesn't.

Client: WSC FOC

WSC Friends Of Children (FOC) has replied my message and said that they are keen to work with us for their upcoming bonding day in 20 March to supply for the night snack. Immediately after they expressed interest, we quickly churned out a proposal based on their budget. From how they have respond, they greatly appreciated the efficiency we have offered and this remark made me realise that efficiency is also one of the key areas we can value add to our consumers. To further ensure that we are efficient and quick, it may be good that we prepare a few standard proposal based on varying per pax budget range. This would then allow us to immediately, if not quickly, respond to our consumers’ enquiries.

Skype Call

Later that night our team also had a skype call to discuss about the upcoming MiE presentation. As our team has 2 business models to present, we may have to cover some areas briefly and answer them in detail during Q&A sessions. As of now, through the preparation of presentation, I feel that our team has grown tremendously throughout this period and thankfully, things are starting to looking better.

Outreach Efforts

New day, same routine. Today, I continued to reach out to various group through connections and various platforms. I noticed that a few of my friends are in WSC and ODAC decided to reach out to them, hoping to be quickly connected to the people who are in charge of events planning in the organisation. Thankfully, with the help of my friends, I was connected to a few portfolios in WSC and ODAC today. On top of that, I also continued to use Instagram to direct message halls for collaborations. However, one problem of using Instagram direct message function is that: if the organisation is not following you on Instagram, they will not receive notification for your message and it will appear as a request to message. In the event where they do not see the request, our outreach will not be unsuccessful. Nonetheless, I hope that today’s outreach will have something in return.

Client: CAC

Additionally, I have also did up a collaboration menu with Shurong for the CAC event. For this event, I have liaised with Eastwest which is one of the food caterers that we are working with. Now, we would just have to wait for CAC to revert to us regarding the collaboration.

Client Project

I have just sent out the proposed menu for 1 breakfast, 2 lunch and 1 buffet for our client Banyan Hall. As of now, we are still waiting for their reply so that we can proceed.

Food Supplier

On the other hand, I have also spoken more to one of the caterers that we are looking at which is EastWest. After they have seen the number of pending projects we have on hand, they seem to be more keen and convinced to lower the prices for us. Hopefully things work well.

MyAdFriend

To facilitate MyAdFriend's roll out of Chop Chop!'s advertisements, I have approached Hall 1 JCRC member and asked if it is possible for us to work with them. Right now, they appeared relatively neutral and open to ideas. I hope this works out.

One critical point I notice from operatin businesses is that it is very important to leverage on your current network of friends to establish the initial consumer base. As this word of mouth through your friends will eventually help you secure cold sales and other more sales from strangers.

Surveying our customers

Kai Xiang has previously conducted a survey to find out what were the response regarding the previous business model and the current. However, after attending an entrepreneurship workshop which highlighted the importance of one to one surveys and interactions with customers, I decided to reach out to one of our regular customer who I happen to chance upon. This happened when I was scrolling through NTUHappeningSiol on Telegram to hunt for suitable audiences to reach out for our new events planning business. I reached out to Jayshree who was looking for people to join her to be part of Comedy Standups. As I was asking her if she was keen to get food supplies for her events, I noticed she was one of our regulars and took the chance to approach her for a quick survey. From the screenshot attached, I quickly notice the importance of having interviews with your consumers as you will discover things about your business that cannot be easily learnt from simply conducting surveys. In this case, we realise that her regular purchases were larger spurred by price and not so much of the convenience we offered as compared to the nearby eateries. This deviates from our company’s mission and vision and our marketing promotion (buy 1 get 1 free) may have came too quickly into the operations of our business. We should have conducted more marketing instead and this, I believe is something we are working towards in the new business model.

Our team had a meeting today and have concluded some points together. Apart from the MiE presentation discussion, we have had a productive discussion on the operations of Chop Chop! with the following focuses.

Focus: To ensure that our business remains relevant

One of the problems that we have previously identified is that our customers can potentially bypass us and order direct from our suppliers once they know who they are. In light of this, there is honestly very little we can do. As school events usually do not need much value-added services since the school compound itself has many resources which are often free and accessible to the student body. As such, what we can do is to charge our customer the cost price as of now and attempt to establish trust and long term relationship with our supplier after multiple order so that we can get a discounted price. In future, we hope to transfer the cost savings to brand ourselves as a more desirable partner.

Focus: Improved efficiency

To further ensure that our business is more effective and efficient, we will also be doing up a google form so that we can use it to send out to all our customer. This also helps to ensure the accountability within our group as it ensures that most if not all collaborations are reflected on one platform.

To further improve downtime, we will also do up a menu with all our food products based on varying per pax budget to send to our customers.

Focus: To establish our brand

To establish our brand, we have thought of setting up a booth on Saturday (NTU Open House Day) so that we can easily reach out to the ready pool of school event organisers and at the same time also let them try some of the food (i.e. onigiri) that is on our menu. However, we may not be rolling this plan out as most of us seem to be unavailable and since it is a large scale school event, school management is likely to be present. As we are thinking of selling our food items to the public, without proper approval (which may not allow us to be approved in time), we may get into trouble.

Unicon

Today I went to Unicon with 2 other team mates of mine and we held a mini meet up with the team to discuss with the current progress of Chop Chop!. As of now, we notice that NTU has a lot of red tapes that we have to work with. More specifically, we have to be ready to wait for school clubs and hall to get approval from SAO and be paid based on credit line etc. With these, we notice that there is still a lot of things that my team and I have to work on to further strengthen the base of Chop Chop!

In addition, today Kai Xiang also went on to take a video of the buffet catering to add on to our marketing side. I hope the visuals can potentially help us to spice up our marketing efforts and at the same time, better convince and persuade our consumers to work with us.

Potential Collaborations made through workshops

Today I have attended an Overseas Entrepreneurship Programme Homecoming event and was happy to meet several entrepreneurs within NTU. During the networking session, Yuefeng and I were lucky to be able to network with some NTU entrepreneurs who are willing to help us out by giving us valuable advices as well as assistance Collaboration with new mediums such as NTUHappeningSiol. Currently, I am still liaising and working something out with them to see how Chop Chop! can further expand our network to quickly infiltrate and establish our presence in this aspect.

The need to establish our presence is because we notice that student clubs and bodies usually have a ready list of food supplier that already meet their needs and requirement. As such, Chop Chop! has to be ready to brand ourselves as an events planner which greatly simplify the whole planning process by helping them save time in a sense where we are an one-stop platform for them to handle all aspects of their event.

EastWest Fusion Supplier

Currently, every member in the team reaching out to various food caterers to ensure that we have a wide pool of suppliers to not only offer variety to our consumers but also to ensure that we are able to have ready suppliers to meet our consumers’ budget. As of now, I am currently in talks with Eastwest which is one of the food suppliers we are looking to work with. We have specifically chosen them as we felt that they have a really affordable range of food which meets more requirements such as Halal needs and Vegetarian choices. As I spoke to them today, they are happy to offer to work with us. However, the discount range they are offering is relatively low (i.e. 10 cents). This small discount has led to a very small profit margin on our side and restricts our ability to profit from here onwards. This is essentially the main problem that our company faces as in order to market ourselves as a great events planner to work with, we have to be able to price lower than the company’s publicly available catering menu online. Currently, my team is still brainstorming of ways to make it attractive for both our consumers and suppliers to work with us.

1. MyAdFriend Collaboration Updates

Today I had a short phone call with Amber from MyAdFriend to discuss more regarding the collaboration between our teams. My team has decided to leverage on MyAdFriend’s pool of resources to further widen our marketing reach. More specifically, MyAdFriend actually business model helps companies to advertise by posting company’s advertisements on the relevant Facebook pages’ as cover photo and pinned post. After some discussion within my team, we felt that it was good and effective to attempt to widen our reach in this manner, especially when MyAdFriend as an agent can easily reach out to other NTU groups who are our main target audience as of now. As we are still in talks as of now, hopefully everything turns out well. Amber will let me know how I can assist her in the visual creation and other aspect to further enhance the effectiveness of our collaboration.

2. Banyan Hall Events

On the other hand, I am also the point of contact for the collaboration with Banyan Hall for their orientation meals for 2019. Our main mode of communication is telegram as it is quick, effective and efficient. Banyan has just informed me that there is a change in their plans and they will not be collaborating with us to order all of their meals but only some of it. However, their total pax count have increased from 170 to 190. As we are still in the introduction stage of rolling out our new business model, our team is primarily more focused on securing deals. Hence, while there is a potential fall in the total expected revenue, we are still happy to work with Banyan.

1. Hall 6 Collaboration Updates

Hall 6 has replied and said that they would not want to work with us after some consideration as the other company is more economical and they were able to know who the caterer was. During our proposal to Hall 6, we have noticed that the price that we offered to them were unattractive as it was $5.50 for a meal (nasi lemak + drink). Even though the nasi lemak was famous, we were unable to reveal the caterer as we worried that they may bypass us and approach the caterer directly. With this, we notice that this are our shortcomings and we indeed have to work out a plan to target these areas in order to make ourselves more attractive as an events provider. On the other hand, Banyan has yet to get back to us regarding their acceptance of proposal but we have another pending collaboration with Binjal hall. I think things are sailing relatively smooth but we need more work to be done to sharpen our events operations.

2. Updates From Daily Operations Team

On the other hand, the daily operations team has went through discussions and are leaning towards scraping daily operation and focussing on events based sales to support the company. The department has yet to finalise their decision but they will soon with more concrete arguments and breakdowns.

Meeting

1. Department Allocation

Today, after a meeting, our team has decided to spilt into 2 departments so that we can specialise and focus on our area of focus. In this case, we have decided to allocate the manpower into 2 main teams - events (Eunice and Yue Feng) and on-side retail (Alvin, Kai Xiang and Shu Rong). The main rationale was so that we can better utilise the manpower that we have. In this case with a 5 people team, not everyone is involved in the operations. As such, we wanted to diversify our revenue streams since depending on daily onsite sales does not seem to make the cut. At the same time, we want to fully utilise what we have.

2. Events Update

For the events side, we are in talks with Hall 6 and Banyan hall for their event on 12 Feb and orientation camp respectively. On top of that, Yue Feng and I will be reaching out to the various halls to check if they have any events on hand that would like to be outsourced to us. Despite having a few contacts on hand, we would have to work out on specific plans and profit margin for every project so that we can send to our customers on a readily basis.

3. Operations Team

On the other hand, the daily operations team will be further evaluating on the feasibility and viability to carry on the operations. They will be looking into other food options for consideration as onigiri is not halal or vegetarian friendly.

4. Marketing

Lastly, for the marketing, to further sharpen our reach out, Alvin will also be looking to collaborate with the My AdFriend to see what they can draft our for us to widen our reach.

Today marks the last day of operation for Chop Chop!'s first week. Chop Chop! has made a loss of almost $500 this week and my team just had a meeting to decide on how we want to move on from here onwards. Here are some details that we have discussed about:

1. Change in business model

Our team have decided to expand our operation to a larger scale as we notice that simple B2C is not effective and in fact, our efforts do not seem to translate into income fast enough. As such, we are looking into operating as events providers as well as we have contacts for Japanese cuisines such as Bentos and Onigiri, Lei Cha, and Boon Lay's Power Nasi Lemak. Hence, this is a possible area where we can venture into. However, while we already have some events on hand for us to cater to, we may not be able to meet the invoice requirement that NTU students require in order to claim from the school. Since our company is not officially registered as a legitimate business entity, our team is also considering if we should register as one. As of now, our direction is still quite unclear but we are working on it.

2. Reduction of MOQ and increasing shelf life

As of now, our onigiris have a shelf life of 2 days even though in actuality, it is longer than that. This is because our team wanted to ensure that our customers will consume it while it is at its freshest state. However, we have decided to request for an extension of expiry date printed on our products as we wanted to be able to sell them for a longer period. This would then ensure that we can hit our MOQ for free delivery easily as delivery fee is $40 and it is a significant element which affects our profits given the small quantity that we are selling now. In addition to ease our load, I would also be requesting for a lower MOQ of 100.

3. Week 2 Operations

While we understand that start-ups often face a problem of having loss at the start of the operation, my team have decided not to continue operations in week 2. This is mainly due to the reason that any more loss will cripple our ability to pivot from there onwards and also because our team feels that our current operation can be further improved. As such, we would like to take some time to improve on our operations. While we are starting to gain more awareness on both social media and physical presence, we feel that the temporary time-out is necessary for us to develop in a better and faster manner.

These are some of the social media postings I have made this week.

Operations

Today is our second day of operation and to be honest, the sales figure fell short of what we have expected. We have a total of 240 stocks to clear in 2 days and today which marks the last day before our goods expire, we sold about 70 onigiris which is essentially less than a quarter of our total stocks. This is a little worrying but it may be due to the fact it is still the first week of school and people still prefer to eat out as their schedule is not as tight. With this, my team is hoping to see a better sales figure from tomorrow onwards.

Instagram Promotion

For my side, as I am in charge of marketing, I have spent $18 to promote our Instagram page and have reached 1376 people over 3 days. However, we only have about 100 followers. A detailed insight of our promotion can be seen in the image attached and it seems that the marketing efforts are relatively ineffective in gaining brand awareness and our promotion (buy 4 get 1 free) does not seem to reach most of our audience. With this, I would be looking into more effective ways to market our product by surveying some of my friends for honest opinions and advices.

Tomorrow marks the second order from our supplier and hopefully, we are able to sell more of our stocks now. For now, we plan to re-evaluate our operations after the first week's overall sales figure.

Hive Recee

Yesterday, I went to do collection for logo stickers and banners before filming a directory video to post on our social media platforms for our customers. During the table set-up, we noticed some minor problems that may disrupt our operation. These problems were not initially expected or forecasted during our discussions. During our set-up, we realise that the location that we have chosen (NTU Hive) is relatively windy and we are likely to face problems such as drastic movement in table cloths as well as falling banners due to the strong wind. While the problem may seem to be a small one, it is relatively significant in our operation since our daily operation involves a minimum 2 and maximum 3 members. Hence, there may not be sufficient people to attend to the customers as well as the problems at the same time. Since it may also disrupt the collection process of our customers, we are likely to get weights and clips to ensure that our set-up will stay in place while we serve the customers.

Through the set-up, I realise that it is very important for us to carry out a trial before actual launch of anything as it is only through the process that we will identify problems that we may have overlooked. As such, these helps to greatly smoothen up the operation of our business.

On top of these, we have finished filming and editing the directory video for our customers. Through the video, we hope to promote our social media page as more approachable and friendly as a business. At the same, we have also announced the giveaway winners which is one of the marketing strategies we have adopted. Currently, our page has a total of 81 followers. This may be an issue as this signifies limited brand awareness for Chop Chop! – which is an important factor in our operation since we do not exactly have a permanent physical store front. However, our team is looking to carry out Whatsapp blasts tonight to spread the word about the launch of our preorders. Hopefully this will help Chop Chop! to reach out to more people soon. Ideally, we hope to reach around 250 followers before 14^thJanuary which is our launch date.

Food Tasting

Today, my team have also went for bento tasting. The bento tasting did not seem to go as well as expected. With this, my team will be having more discussions regarding what we can bring in to diversify our revenue source.

3 more days to launch!!

So far I have met some issues with social media postings as I realise that the response for giveaway on Chop Chop! became relatively stagnant as the participation rate is only approximately 22. Even though that figure is relatively acceptable for a campaign which has took place over 2 days, I feel that the response could be a lot higher. I also notice that based on the insights from Instagram, our conversion rate is not high as we have reached 252 accounts but 78% of the accounts are not following us. So to increase our followers further, we may have to think of other ways to spread our brand awareness. Such as engaging NTU Free Food etc to spread our awareness.

I have also made some amendments to our menu as our photos for onigiris are edited and ready for use! I will also be changing the contact information due to the change in our ordering system. However, while our team is using Shopify, we may still be considering to convert to use wordpress as wordpress is free and more friendly to our budget.

In terms of operations, I have also placed orders for the opening week with our supplier and so far, things seems to be doing well! The supplier has agreed to drop our onigiris in 2 locations which is beneficial for us as we wanted to store some supplies while we sell some supplier. Hopefully everything goes well for the collection of stickers, banners and fridge and the filming of direction to our store goes well tomorrow too!

Also, we have arranged a bento sampling on Friday with the supplier so that we can diversify our revenue! Excited!

Less than a week to Chop Chop!'s official opening!

Today I have ordered the stickers for Chop Chop! from a different supplier from what we initially planned due to our tighter timeline and budget. The new supplier intially charged >$100 which was beyond our budget but I managed to negotiate to a little below $100 to fit our budget and timeline. While stickers may be an additional variable cost element to our business, it is undeniable as it helps to generate brand recognition, spread brand awareness and even decorate our product. Hence, even if it is an additional cost, we would still be willing to spend on it so that we can establish our brand presence - which is especially important since Chop Chop! operate mostly online.

On top of that, today I have also managed to get most of the items for the collection table set-up. So on the day itself, there will be a board on the table as a decorative element as with the phrase "Have a Rice Day!" as a simple pun to attract people's attention.

Today, we have also started promoting Chop Chop! on our social media. So today, we have posted a simple yet interactive post on Instagram for people to participate and notice Chop Chop! So far for the first day of posting, the response is relatively good and our followers have increased to 56, which is an impressive number for such a short period of time.

Hope everything sails smoothly as planned!

Less than 14 days to the official opening of Chop Chop!

My team made another trip to RE&S to obtain food samples for tasting as well as photoshoot today! After a meeting with the team, we have decided to sell 3 flavours: Salmon, Teriyaki Chicken and Tuna Mayo, leaving out Salmon Tartar and Unagi. As of the remaining 2 flavours, we felt that salmon tartar was a little reptitive and unagi can be used as a "special guest" during special occasions such as Chinese New Year or Valentines. We have also recevied news from our supplier that the bentos will be made available for us to distribute by end January. Cross fingers that the bento tasting will live up and beyond our team's expectation so that it will impress our customers as well!

After the food tasting session, I went back to NTU for photoshoot. I was really thankful to be able to engage one of my friend who is really keen in photography. With her help, we have significantly cut down some time figuring out how to take attractive photos, especially since my team is really time-strapped right now. Shoutout to Sze-G for helping me out!

We have also decided on the final set-up of our table. For now, the colours will be black and white, similar to an onigiri, just like the picture shown - white table cloth and black table runner with a simple board. As of now, I have finished sourcing for the table set-up materials and it is within our budget. As a start-up, there is very tight budget for most expenses. However, thankfully with the help of technology, there is carousell which sells brand new items that can be negotiated. With these platforms, it has effectively saved us some dollars for other expenses.

However, there are some expenses which are cannot thrift on. In this case, it would be the label stickers and roll-up which will help Chop Chop! in terms of branding as it helps us to stand out. If all goes well, I will be submitting the designs for printing tomorrow. Through this designing, I realised the importance of dimensions and every inch affects the placement of the design elements and it is critical that every design is in the dimension that it is supposed to be in for the best effect.

Moving forward, our team is preparing for the set-up of the venue for collection. For myself, as I am in charge of the marketing and visual merchandising aspects, I have came to design a roll-up design for our customers to spot us easily at NTU HIVE. As of now, I have sent the image attached below to the group chat with a few other variations. Of course, we are still open to making amendments to the roll-up design as the photoshoot of onigiri will only take place tomorrow.

However, operating as a start-up has made me realise that you should not be overly concerned about having too many ideas. In fact, the more ideas you have, the better it is for the company. In this case, should the team decide to use photos taken tomorrow for the roll-up design, the design or concept can still be used in other aspects.

On top of sending the visuals to my group, I have also decided to send it to my other close friends to obtain more opinions for improvement. This is because I realise that sometimes as business owners ourselves, we may too invested into the concept and tend to be blinded in terms of area for improvement. With an external opinion, we can understand and see things from different perspective and improve our business operations accordingly.

I have contacted Skye (Instagram: skyechew) today with regards to the marketing plans and she is really willing to help! In addition, she also hopes to get some for her 4 friends to share the onigiri with, which we are happy to give since it is within our budget.

I have also came up with some designs for the Instagram posting/Whatsapp blast for our shop which will be posted together with Kaixiang's step-to-step guide to order. I personally think that too much information in a visual kills the content, especially since people who are scrolling social media have short attention span nowadays. Hopes the simple designs will call out to people!

13 more days!!!

30 December 2018

We had a team meeting to discuss and decide on a few items.

As of now, our launched date will remain unchanged and fixed on 14 January. However, due to our suppliers' speed of reply, we may have to hasten and adjust our preparation plans accordingly.

During the meeting, we confirmed that we will be selling 3 different flavours (Teriyaki Chicken, Tuna Mayo and Salmon). Since the supplier has raised MOQ to 150, we will be ordering 150 per day and selling at $2.50. We have also decided on our location which will be Hive as it is near Koufu, HSS and NBS. On top of that, it is also a place where students frequently bring their takeaways to consume at. However, with regards to food wastage, we have yet to decide on a concrete plan as to if we should give away to friend, take home or throw away as this largely concerns our brand name.

With regards, to marketing plans, we will be having a buy 4 get 1 free promotion to entice people to buy. To further heighten our intital sales, we will be engaging some influencers, which I will be in-charge of contacting. Later into the operation, we are also looking to have some festive season promotion such as for CNY and for valentines. On top of that, once we have met the supplier for photoshoo ton 4 Jan, I will order the logo stickers and print the roll-up for our collection point.

15 December 2018

Due to our tight timeline, we may have to do a few items concurrently. For now, since I am in charge of design as well as marketing, I would be looking into more ways to strengthen our marketing strategies. I have approached a few mirco-influencers in school and they appeared to be quite keen to help us spread the word for Chop Chop!.

For the collaborations, I may have to work with the accounts side to see what we can offer to the micro-influencers i.e. something that is attractive yet within our budget.

At the same time, I have also approached and consulted some of my friends who are more well-versed regarding the layout and designs of our Instagram page. After a longer look, I feel that the designs and captions can be further improved to attract our audience.

For now, I would have to wait for their reply to proceed with the designs.

This is how our Instagram page looks like now:

14 December 2018

Today I met up with Yuefeng to consult one of the personnels from SAO regarding the school regulations for food operations. We found out that despite having reverted to SAO regarding the approval of operations at Chop Chop!, SAO is generally not in charge of this. In fact, the one is charge is effectively ODFM and/or leasing which we may have to meet and consult more regarding the regulations. We also suspect that it is not our food choice that is being rejected. In fact, we are rejected due to the anti-compeition policies in place.

After the meeting, Yuefeng and I collated information our team has prepared such as the financial projections by Alvin and Shu Rong and finalised our business proposal so that we can send it to our supplier for review. Now we would have to wait for their decision to see if they would want to supply us bentos again. If not, depending on the team's decision, we may have to source for new supplier or only sell onigiri.

8 December 2018

Today we met Prof Roderick and Lili for a consultation session regarding Chop Chop!. Professor Roderick gave us some advice regarding how to further lower our cost and increase our sales through the respective marketing aspects which I thought were really helpful. After the consultation session, my team had a meeting to discuss on how we should proceed on from here. During the meeting, there were a few items that we have achieved and finalised:

• Constructed a new projection based on our new menu and business operation
• Arranged another meeting with our supplier for further discussion
• Arranged meeting with SAO to find out about school regulations and restrictions
• Started on our business proposal

The inforgraphic attached will be our improved and revised operations where we will be operating mainly online instead of having both online and walk-in

6 December 2018

Today, my team and I had a meeting with our supplier to further discuss on the products that we are about to offer to the student body. In case SAO rejects onigiri, my team has proposed to sell onigiri as well as a few other possible food options which the student body are keen to see in NTU. Some other food options that we have suggested includes sushi and soba noodles.

During our meeting, our supplier has confirmed that it was possible to supply onigiri to the student body and has shown us several samples of what they are able to offer. Depending on our cost price and selling price, they are also willing to make some tweaks to lower the cost price so as to meet the profit margin that we have in mind. So far, the discussion with our supplier appeared to be relatively optimistic for Chop Chop!

After the discussion with our supplier, our team had an internal meeting to further discuss on how to move forward if SAO accepts or rejects our onigiri idea. It was then, SAO emailed to let us know that our onigiri idea was not accept. At this point of time, my team and I were really confused and unsure regarding the criteria for SAO approval. As such, we decided to schedule a meeting so as to facilitate the communication of criteria.

This is a sample onigiri that our supplier showed us!

10 November 2018

My team is currently in the midst of discussion with NTU Student Union to find out more about our desired location - Concourse@South Spine. So far, location of our business does not seem to be an issue.

However, we may face problems when seeking approval from the school as we are looking to sell Japanese Bentos. This food choice may be deemed to be in conflict of interest with the existing vendors in NTU. Regarding this, we would have to discuss and seek approval from SAO. I hope our food choice will not be rejected as our potential supplier is really promising and is almost able to fulfil all our needs and demands.

In any case, this is how our proposed menu looks like

8 November 2018

Today, I contacted our food supplier again to arrange for a meet up next week. This is so that both parties can discuss to come up with a more comprehensive business plan together.

I tried creating a website for Chop Chop! today. However, I faced some problems. I had little knowledge about how to use Wordpress to create a website even though I have attended a Wordpress creation course before. More specifically, I faced problems creating a comprehensive and user-friendly website as my knowledge is limited and as such, more time may be requitred for me to discover the functions etc. However, being a founder of Chop Chop!, I notice that time is usually not in favour of start-ups and as such, I would have to find a alternative soon. So when I heard that Shoptify is more user-friendly, I decided to hop onto the bandwagon. Only later, I found out that while Shoptify may be more user-friendly, it is not entirely free and requires payment at many different point of time. As such, I decided to seek help from my team. Hopefully, we can come up with an attractive website soon for our consumers and supplier!

At the same time, I have redesigned the menu which is closer to the colours and the theme of my brand.

This is how the layout of our menu looks like now:

5 November 2018

Today, our team have collectively designed a new survey to present to our potential supplier. We designed the survey with an intention to present to the suppliers the menus that are more received by the student body. Through this, my team hope to be able to better understand the price points that the students are looking at so that we can better negotiate and bargain with the suppliers, along with the menu that they are looking at.

As I am in charged of designs of creatives, I have designed a Instagram story and a post as one of the medium to broadcast our survey. However, as our following count is still relatively low, the outreach does not seem to be as effective as expected. Perhaps, due to our current situation, requesting for participation of survey through word of mouth may be more effective.

As I am preparing the Instagram story for Chop Chop!, I noticed that even though we are a business account, we are unable to use the "swipe up" function which allows our audience to directly land on our survey page. This call for action is relatively important in my opinion as it encourages people to participate in our survey due to the ease offered. After some research, I notice that this "swipe up" function is only available to business accounts with 10k followers. I hope we reach there soon!

This is how our Instagram stories and posts currently look like:

Our team went down to meet the supplier yesterday and after much discussion, our team decided to conduct another survey to decide on our menu. This is so that we can best cater to the variety and choice that the student body may be looking for.

Generally, the meeting went smoothly and we were able to learn more about our supplier’s operation and preparation of food. We hope to be able to deliver the best quality and quantity of food to cater to our consumers.

For now, we have to decide on the quantity and the choice we are intending to offer.

I have also just updated our social media platform. More specifically, Instagram. Today I personally realise the importance of having a good caption to attract people’s attention. I hope I can improve my caption crafting skills soon.

Excited to launch our product! This is how our Instagram page looks like now:

Today, I have finished and finalised on the logo of our company. I have also made the relevant changes to the social media platforms. However, after I have uploaded the logo for the company, I realise that the theme for the company logo does not match with the theme of the cover photo. For the purpose of consistency and better representation of our company, I came up with another design for the cover photo.

In essence, our company will be adopting the fun approach instead of the lifestyle approach. This is mainly because as the focus of our business lies greatly on the service and not so much of the product, instilling fun and minimising the hassle our consumers face may be a better representation of our business.

Also, our team will be having our first meeting with our supplier tomorrow. Hope everything goes well!

This is how our logo and cover photo looks like:

My team had an online meeting last Sunday to further discuss regarding our choice of supplier. Initially, our team was looking to offer bento sets. However, we later decided to change our direction to offer something new, such as onigiri. There are many merits to the food choice.

Firstly, given that it is different from what is offered in Koufu, it is likely to be well-received by the student body.

Secondly, onigiri (also known as Japanese rice balls) may be more convenient for the student body to consume as compared to bento sets. This will help us call out to students who like to bring some snacks or food into lectures and seminars as the food choice is not messy.

Since Chop Chop! aims to offer an easier and more fuss-free dining option, rice balls may be a potential area we may wish to look into.