Adviser to a Small Business Owner or Manager
Your ultimate mission is to identify two or three major issues facing the owner or manager of small or medium size catering business and recommend a practical course of action that addresses these issues or problems.
You need to start this by interviewing the owner or manager of a small catering business. It may be someone you already know, such as a friend or family member, or a contact discovered by networking. Ideally this individual will be working in an industry or business type that is of interest to you. High priority should be given to identifying a business that is beyond Stage 1 of the Churchill and Lewis framework. That is, this assignment works best if the catering business you identify has 5-7 employees, is beyond survival and, has more than one location.
Specifically:
In the course of your probing questions, learn what the business is and work at identifying two or three issues facing the owner. They may be problems the subject knows he or she has or it may be problems that you see to which the subject may be unaware. In rare cases, the business may be running well, but there is always something that could be done better, more efficiently or even eliminated.
Your analysis should discuss how the owner has been addressing these issues to date. What is working and what is not?
As an adviser to the owner, what would you recommend: What should that company do? (Or ask the question about a specific manager: What should Mr./Ms. X do?). And, of course, Why. Always, Why!
Words of advice: The problems are often not what the owner or manager thinks they are. They may just be symptoms. Review Mr. Roberts in the Ajax case.
The interview can take place over the phone or in person. You should probe areas of finance, marketing, management and organization. The name and title of the person as well as the name, address, and phone number of the organization with whom they are affiliated should also be included in the report final report.
Getting good financial information is almost always the most challenging. You can assure your subject that the information never goes further than the instructors. If helpful, pseudonyms could be used in the paper, so long as you separately, in an email, alert the instructor to the actual name of the business. Obtaining full financials is not always necessary. Asking about relevant financial numbers could be sufficient. But probe: e.g., do expenses include a salary for the owner (if actively involved in management)? Do revenues include long outstanding receivables?
Furthermore, dont take everything at face value. For example, if the owner of a chain of five coffee shops says that 80% of revenue comes from coffee sales and the average sale is $3 and youre told revenue for the chain is about $100,000 per week that would mean about 5300 coffee sales weekly per store (or more than one cup every minute, 7 days a week, 12 hours per day). Does that seem reasonable?
