A business proposal for bringing a food truck to campus

Business Proposal -- Marketing and Demographics

Customer Category #1 -- University Students

Customer Characteristics

University students represent a highly mobile group of customers for whom ready, convenient availability and speed of service are critical selling points. Typically, students seek breakfast, lunch, and snack venues that do not require them to deviate from their schedules or from their walking routes in between classes and other scheduled requirements on campus. Because keeping the ancillary costs associated with their education (i.e. those not directly related to tuition, housing, and class materials) as low as possible, they seek affordable options for discretionary spending such as choice of food vendor.

Operational Incorporation of Demographic Characteristics

Proximity of the food service venue to the routes taken by students from dormitories to class and from class to class or lecture hall to lecture hall is the most critical operational element of the proposed service. Accordingly, the Proposed venture concept will rely heavily on the use of mobile food service trucks is the key to this venture, precisely because it permits situating the point of services in the exact areas most frequented by students throughout their day on campus. Beyond the physical location of the venues, the most important element of the venture necessary to guarantee its success will be the selection of menu items and the training of vendors to ensure that all food service transactions are capable of being filled within minutes of order placement. That is simply a function of the fact that students tend to eat during their relatively short breaks in between classes, making waiting times greater than 5 or 10 minutes the maximum limit to attract the largest possible customer base from this demographic group.

While it is anticipated that lunchtime service will provide the greatest revenue stream for the venture, there are also significant opportunities at night time. Specifically, the USC campus is a very socially active environment at night, especially but not exclusively on weekend nights. On any given weekday, particularly toward the end of the week, there are numerous social and recreational events all over the campus, some of which extend well past midnight. Currently, students seeking late-night food service have to rely primarily on the relatively limited food fare available through delivery services or they have to leave the safety and security of the USC campus to walk or drive to nearby fast-food restaurants, many of which are located in areas that are significantly less safe and that represent a much greater risk of being victimized by violent crime than the immediate area of the USC campus. Therefore, it is anticipated that there will be great student demand for the proposed venture services well into the night.

Marketing Avenues

University students and other potential customers from the same age group make more use of online commercial applications (or "apps") and of Twitter than any other customer demographic. Therefore, it would be advisable to create a Twitter page for the proposed venture that rewards followers with regular discount codes that must be redeemed within a specific time frame. Likewise, Twitter provides the opportunity to employ contests, such as for re-tweeting promotions and for posting customer testimonials about the venture. In addition to increasing demand generally, that mechanism can also be used to incentivize patronage during what would otherwise be slower times, such as the hours in between the last classes of the day and the evening or late night crowd associated with nighttime social activities. Another marketing avenue would be a Facebook page with an app that provides continually updated information specifying the precise location of every mobile service van so that customers never have to search for them beyond accessing that app from the convenience of their cellular phones.

Customer Category #2 -- Mobile Workers within the Vicinity of the University

Customer Characteristics

While the principal demographic group targeted by the venture's promotional and marketing efforts will be students, there are also opportunities to include non-students from the same geographic area in the process. Specifically, the USC campus is a sprawling environment that borders many office parks and commercial businesses within the immediate vicinity of the campus. Employees of those businesses typically face many of the same schedule pressures as students, such as fitting in their lunches within relatively short time frames during the work day, as well as finding quick and convenient food service options at the end of their workday where they can purchase a snack immediately before their commute home or that they can take out to their cars for those commutes. In that regard, convenience, proximity to their work place and speed of preparation services are the most critical elements for the success of the venture with this customer demographic. By the same token, these customers are less likely to be reached by online apps or Twitter and more likely to respond to the mere proximity of the service van to their places of business and physical routes leaving their offices and businesses.

Operational Incorporation of Demographic Characteristics

Just as proximity of service is critical to the success of the venture to university students on campus, it is also crucial to the success of the venture with working non-student professionals employed in businesses within the immediate vicinity of the USC campus. Moreover, because the individuals in this customer demographic will probably prefer to avoid having to actually enter the USC campus to patronize the service van, it would be advisable to situate the vans at the perimeter of the campus during the time period (i.e. approximately 3:00 to 6:00 PM) when services will be in greatest demand by non-student working professionals will want access to convenient food. Luckily, this time period probably coincides with the lowest demand on campus. Meanwhile, it can serve both demographics simultaneously.

Marketing Avenues

Whereas it is anticipated that online marketing will be the principal avenue of marketing to the fulltime university student demographic, it is expected that a different mechanism will provide the most benefit in connection with fulltime non-student employees in the vicinity of the campus. Specifically, in addition to relying on the visual conspicuousness of the service vans situated on the perimeter of the USC campus, the marketing campaign to the non-students in the area should, ideally, include actually providing samples of the fare. In that regard, this marketing initiative should include the distribution of flyers a day or two in advance and then one or more vans should be assigned to park in commercial office parks nearby the USC campus during breakfast and lunch time to distribute free samples. Ideally, this initiative should be scheduled to coincide with a school holiday that is not also a typical business holiday so that more service vans could be assigned to this promotional role without costing revenue from lost sales on the USC campus.

Customer Category #3 -- Customers with Specific Ethnic Food Preferences