Business Expansion Plan of Yoghurtology Frozen Yoghurt Shop

Case Study

YOGHURTOLOGY FROZEN YOGHURT SHOP

A 'Yoghurtology' Frozen Yoghurt shop was set by Frank Jones with his business partner Peter Jackson, eighteen months ago. The shop is located in busy Bullring Shopping Centre in Birmingham which is an ice-cream parlour shop that specialises in selling frozen yoghurt.

Both the partners have hospitality experience where Frank has worked as a chef in a large contract catering restaurant chain and Peter was the hospitality manager of a local hotel. This led to setting up of shop from their redundancy money in order to have a start-up for a business venture.

Frank and Peter have contributed £30,000 each by securing a 3 year lease on a shop and few of its working capital in order to pay the suppliers and to have enough stock. This led to growth of business after which the partners took a loan of £20,000 from the bank in order to promote their business and to develop new product lines.

The shop has two full-time members in staff to cover the long hours of shop which is open from 10am – 8pm. The busy weekends are covered by two part-time members of the staff ass the shop is less busy during the week days. The volume of shoppers at the weekend makes the shop busy in weekends.

The shop is located in the busy Bullring Centre which is a very large and popular shopping centre in the city of Birmingham. There are several shops in the shopping centre but no one sells frozen yoghurt except the Yoghurtology frozen yoghurt shop.

It completely depends on the customers to like frozen yoghurt during weekday and weekends as there are different kinds of customers. The shop is very popular among young children and even attracts workers in the area. The shop is also booked with teenagers and young adults at weekends to meet their friends. Frank and Peter though that their business has grown due to their friendly service, good quality and healthy products and low price with mouth recommendations. They thought of increasing the quality of their product by buying products from a local organic farm in order to have better quality products and even to increase the cost of their products. The partners are being conscious of going towards adopting healthier trends with the increasing demand of the customers but at the same time there is less requirement of the product in the Winter months. Therefore, they are thinking to diversify its products in order to give different choice to its customers through out the whole year.

The partners are in major dilemma regarding their yoghurt supply. On one hand, they are attracted by the convenience of buying in bulk and providing of low prices which helps them to keep the low prices of the desserts. On other hand, they are inclining towards using fresher organic ingredients and experiment with premium products but are concerned with the rising of prices. They are looking towards catering different needs of the customers in order to target different market segments and to take advantage of the opportunities by understanding the macro environmental factors.