Small Business History

Topic: An examination into the rise and fall of Starbucks Coffee Company and its relationship to certain microeconomic principles.

Although the restaurant industry is perceived to have high risk of failure, the risk of a restaurant failing is not too different from other small businesses. Parsa et al. quantified the risk of failure at 26% in the first year and 57% by year 3. He also described several factors that can influence the risk of failure. Those include physical location, firm size, speed of growth, differentiation from other restaurants in the market, adapting to external trends, and management experience. In terms of location and differentiation, Paul’s bar will be located in a new development designed to attract affluent customers and with very few competitors. Paul’s small firm size increases risk because of barriers to attract partners (i.e. suppliers and bankers are prejudiced against smaller firms) and growth that may be too rapid to manage. On the other hand, Robert already has experience in the restaurant business and should know how to run the bar and subsequent restaurant. Their choice of a piano bar may be in response to local trends that favor success.

In this paper I will compare my favorite restaurant, Olive Garden, to its most direct competition which in this case is Milestones Bar and Grill. These two restaurants are in competition because they target the same market and are located within one block of each other. Each restaurant is owned by one of top restaurant companies in North America. Olive Garden is owned by Darden Restaurants which also owns Red Lobster, Smokey Bones, Bahama Breeze, Longhorn Steakhouse, and Seasons 52. Cara Operations Ltd. is the owner of the Milestones chain as well as Montana's, Swiss Chalet, Coza, Kelsey's, and several others. Although there are several other restaurants within the same area as the two I have chosen, I

Smackey Dog Foods, Inc. is a relatively young and rapidly growing company. With sales growth that is far outstripping their competitors and expanding operations, the company is in a vulnerable period. The majority of small businesses go bankrupt within the first five years of operation, and the course that the Company follows now has the potential to be either beneficial or disastrous. As management is basing their decision expand on projections developed by the sales teem, the accuracy

Small towns share the same type of community. Everyone in a small town knows everything about a business owner; their family, their community involvement, and who they associate with.

Growing up in a small town, we have many businesses that spring up just in our community or that branch out into neighboring towns. And just like us,

Many successful businesses stem from one simple good idea. Someone with a bit more vision than average mechanise flow in the market. Mr Yip notices that existing producers are failing to provide the benefits that consumers are really looking for. This research focuses on a particularly successful business idea which resulted in the foundation of John’s Cafe, one of the largest home coffee shop companies in the around Melbourne. Large coffee shop was built on 10 Little Bourke Street Melbourne where rates were cheaper and or competitive and people could park easily. Mr Yip built his business on the philosophy ‘We do a little, you do a little, together we save money’ which meant that the customer became part of the production process. All this allowed for long production runs, which provided economies of scale and growth whilst maintaining the quality of the finished products. Instead of increasing the numbers of service personnel when the business grew, he kept the numbers the same, reasoning that employing more

Small businesses are mighty minnows, reflecting the competitive spirit that a market economy needs for efficiency; they provide an outlet for entrepreneurial talents, a wider range of consumer goods and services, a check to monopoly inefficiency a source of innovation, and a seedbed for new industries; they allow an economy to be more adaptable to structural change through continuous initiatives embodying new technologies, skills, processes, or products (Ibielski 1997, p. 1).

The small business marketplace is extremely dynamic and the changes are fast. Here are some encouraging facts from the US Small Business Administration on small businesses. There are about 30 million small businesses in the United States and employ just over half of the country’s private workforce. They employ a staggering 40% of high tech workers such as computer professionals, scientists and engineers. More than half of the small businesses are home-based businesses and two percent of them are franchises. One of the most important aspects is the fact that a majority of innovations in the United States come from small businesses.

The success for a small business lies in its manager 's ability to execute business and performance goals effectively and efficiently. Goals outline how an establishment will conduct business and the direction for meeting objectives. It is the road map that good managers follow and communicate within the organization. Conducting daily business practices, supervising employees, organizing and managing business structures, and communicating with departments are a few of the tasks that manager perform. Managers implement the goals their business will pursue and determine the course of action it will take to achieve these goals (Jones & George 8). Many organizations begin a business before aligning a course of action or leader. In most of these cases discovering the need for a manager becomes a learning process. However, it is soon learned that effective managers organize, motivate performance, and decision-making to keep organizations aligned to its business and performance goals. Successful managers understand that their job is critical to an organization and their actions affect the "Big Picture."

Quality control represents the act of analyzing processes and monitoring operations to ensure that high quality standards are being met at all times. There are many statistical models that can be employed to ensure that the organizations operational objectives are being met. Furthermore, with the advantages of modern technology, these tools can also be used in a real time manner to monitor the quality on a perpetual basis. This can serve as the foundation in which management can try to minimize any operational problems as they occur as well as mitigate the likelihood that the same errors will occur in the future. In many cases simple statistical tools such as scatter plots, control charts, flow charts, histograms and many others can help the organization find the root of the quality problem quickly.

With the development of economic globalization, “fast food” becomes a more and more substantial industry in the business world, which adapts to the pace of people’s life. Each organization spares every effort to stand forward the competition due to the fierce competition. In this article, we focus on the “Starbucks”, a prevailing coffee manufacturer in recent years.

The article I chose for the assignment is about the Shake Shack IPO (Initial Public Offering) and the environment in which is was released. The restaurant’s stock launch was a major success, as the price per share skyrocketed at a growth of 119% from $21 to $45.90, in one day of trading. With the intense growth that Shake Shack experienced, the chain of 63 restaurants was valued at $1.6 billion, which had investors pouring in. While it was expected for Shake Shack to be a success on the launch of their IPO, their valuation and continued growth has shown the shift in the market of restaurants. Society has moved from the fast food era, to a new adaptation, “fast-casual”. Restaurants such as Noodles, Chipotle, Garbanzo, and many others have capitalized on the shift from value to quality based desires.

In this case study, the focus revolves around the Lew Mark Baking Company. The Lew-Mark Baking Company according to the case study is from a small town in western New York. Lew-mark Baking company operates in New York and New Jersey. It employs around 200 workers in a mainly blue collar, informal atmosphere. In my paper, I will answer several questions about operations for this company

In this assignment we are required to research about the new cafeteria on Burger King out to the market. This research will include the Legal, Ethical, Cultural and Industrial analysis about burger King and also the Porters Five Forces. It also includes some strategies about SWOT and PESTEL that are all being written in the report as a part of this assignment.