Meeting Minutes 10/20/09
- Current Status:
-All team members have completed their “Top 20” competitors based on proximity, price point, and similarity.
-Need to go into these restaurants and make observations about trends in clientele, etc.
- Revising discussion from last week after speaking with Suzanne and Megill:
-There is a great deal of overlap between Industry Analysis and Competitive Analysis based on Megill’s specifications.
-Can we merge these two sections?—Suzanne suggested yes and Megill has agreed to the change in scope.
- What will the combined section include?
-Boulder Business Climate
-Incentive Programs
-Industry Size and Characteristics
-Breaking of Risk Assumptions associated with opening a new restaurant
-Industry Trends and Growth
-Industry Participants (competition, suppliers, promoters)
-Competitive Vision
-Barriers to Entry
-Competitive Advantage
- What should the new section be named?
-Industry and Competitive Analysis—no, not descriptive enough of what we are doing with this section.
-Industry Analysis in Competitive Context—yes.
- Problem: Too many hands on one topic, we are all getting our information from different sources and it is not clearly coming together nor can we effectively share and communicate all of our information and sources with the entire group…
-How does the group feel about splitting up into teams of two to make it easier to share sources and communicate?
-Group Vote: Yes
-Johnny and Leigh will finish up the balance of Industry Analysis in Competitive context as Adam has already done a good deal of research on Target Market, Dimitri will join Adam on a team.
- Work to be Completed by Next Meeting:
-Completion and submission of Industry/Competitive Analysis section
-Continue Target Market Research
Meeting Minutes 10/27/20
- Current Status
-First draft of Industry Analysis in Competitive Context completed, ready to be revised by the team. Will submit to Megill by end of business week.
-Adam and Dimitri beginning to conduct Target Market research
- New News...
-Have uncovered why Megill is highly constrained for time and often flakey..
-Currently involved in a secondary business endeavor which has required a great deal of his attention recently
-Good News: He was honest with us about his situation
-How will we deal with this?—Must keep in more frequent contact and plan out meeting times as far in advance as possible. Need to remind him of these scheduled meetings often.
- New Source of Information for Trends:
-See “Whats Hot” 2009 Chef Survey posted in Google Group
- Goals for Next Week’s Meeting:
-Adam and Dimitri to complete Target Market research
-Leigh and Johnny to revise and finalize industry analysis in competitive context and submit final copy to Megill.
Meeting Minutes 11/3/09
- Current Status
-Completed Industry Analysis in a Competitive Context
-Megill is very happy with the final product.
-Good work team!
- What is Megill’s Status on getting us financial data from catering sales?
-Leigh and Johnny to meet with Megill on Thursday to obtain information
- What do we want to do for financial projections?
1. Basic sales projections based on historical sales
2. Use Dimitri’s Excel spreadsheet for calculating financial ratios and projections
- Splitting up into two teams for the remainder of the project
-Target Market Team (Dimitri/Adam)
- Financial Analysis Team (Leigh/Johnny)
- Target Market Raw Data Discussion:
-Adam and Dimitri have done some great research but it needs to be pulled into a concise format
-Need to have a paragraph pertaining to each section of raw data explaining how it is relevant to Rat’s
-Look at “Whats Hot” 2009 Chef’s Survey—incorporate into target market section
- Creation of an Appendix for more detailed information
-Direct competitor reference sheet
-Boulder county sales data
-Target Market Research
-Miscellaneous Financials
- When will we meet with Megill next?
-Financial Team: This Thursday 11/5/2009
-All Team: Next Tuesday 11/10/09
- Goals for next week:
-Target Market Team: Compile all research on target market, summarize, and format into our standard form.
-Financial Team: Push Megill to give us his historical financials so we can begin to create calculate financial ratios and projections.
Meeting Minutes 11/10/2009
Status Check-in:
-Target Market Team: Adam: completed write up, format looks great.
Dimitri: all data is in graphical form, but still needs to format according to our standards. Says he will have it completed by the end of this week.
-Financial Team: Obtained financial information from Megill, the information he gave is extremely limited and it appears that some of the numbers are fudged.
-Problems:
-Claims to have no liabilities
-Break-even analysis is not actually a break-even analysis.
-Not enough information to actually conduct the analysis and projections that are required for the business plan.
-How to tackle these problems??
-John and Leigh are going to continue to push Megill for more financial information, however, he told us that his computer was “fried” and he may have lost all of his information.
-Adam to print out information Megill did give us to show to Jim and Suzanne (Hitachi Mentor) to discuss how we can work with what is available to us.
Megill Meeting Status:
-Megill is not going to be able to meet tonight due to last minute obligations, we will postpone our meeting until next Tuesday 11/17
-At next meeting will present FINAL target market section for his approval and discuss quality of the financials he gave to us and try to obtain all of the data we need in order to be able to do our analysis and projections correctly.
Need to Divide up more responsibilities for the remainder of the semester:
-John is responsible for all change request forms—completed one for the last change, will complete another if we need to make any changes for financial analysis.
-Leigh is responsible for all meeting minutes and status reports
-Dimitri responsible for quality assurance checklist
-Adam responsible for formatting and outlines.
Goals for Next Week:
-Target Market Team: Completed final version of target market by Sunday 11/15 and submit to the rest of the team for final editing and revision. Will submit to Megill 11/17.
-Financial Team: Talk with Jim and Suzanne about how to make sense of the imperfect financial information given to us.
-Begin drafting “current ownership summary” portion of Financial analysis.
Meeting Minutes 11/19/2009
Good work on presentation, need to change a few portions though…
-Delete “choice du jour” and “when the metal meets the meat” slides
-Replace these slides with explanations of what we actually created for Rat’s
-John to rework “throw me a bone” slide for proper lead in to new slides to follow
-Leigh to create slides on what we actually did.
Changes to presentation roles:
- Leigh to stay on intro
- Adam on “sweet and spicy speculation” and “throw me a bone”
- John to explain what we actually did
- Dimitri to close
Meeting Minutes 12/1/2009
Status Check:
-John spoke to Megill about changing scope due to inconsistent and unclear financial plans. We will create a dynamic spreadsheet by which Megill can input all of his financial information to compute ratios and projections.
-Target Market Analysis final review—needs standard formatting and more explanations for tables and graphs.
Who will be responsible for the Appendix? Lessons Learned? Closure Plan?
-Appendix: Leigh
-Lessons Learned: John
-Closure Plan: Adam
-Megill needs to sign off that we completed the project and need to make a list of requirements that were proposed but not implemented
Meeting with Megill on Wednesday 12/2/2009 7pm
-At this meeting we will present Megill with the finalized product and get him to sign off that he is satisfied with the completed project.
-Goal: have entire business plan fully completed and ready to present by Wednesday’s meeting.