Emma’s Café
Task 1
Below is a link to the survey which I have created to aid Emma. The aim of the survey is to figure out people’s current eating and shopping habits, but also to help Emma determine how many customers she could attract to her café and whether it would be a successful business venture or not. The survey is set out with 8 multiple choice questions asking about the person’s current eating and shopping habits, and whether their eating habits could be changed if a vegetarian café were to be introduced onto the University campus. The 9th question is just a comment box for the person to include any other thoughts that they may have on the subject. I feel that this comment box will help Emma as some people will include more thoughts that they have, that were not covered earlier in the survey. At the minute no matter where you go in Northern Ireland there are very few vegetarian only café’s, so Emma could be onto a winner, as if it turns out successful then she will get more business as she is one of the few vegetarians café’s about, but it is also a risk because it would be new, and possibly difficult to entice people into coming in to try the food to begin with. I think that a vegetarian café on campus could be quite successful as youth nowadays are more likely to try new things, so to begin with it I think it would do quite well, and if the food is good enough then it would continue to do well. The reason I have set out the survey with 7 multiple choice questions is because it is short, and asks what Emma would need to know, and with it being short and also multiple choice then she may be able to get more people to complete it as it would not take much time at all, so more people would be likely to take it i think. As I said i think the comment box at the end is a good idea as people who take the survey seriously could include their thoughts as to whether it would be a good or bad idea and why they think that, and possibly even give some hints or tips as well. The sequence of the questions is really quite simple, the first two questions ask about the person’s eating habits at the moment, then the next two determine whether the person would be open minded about changing their eating habits, and the next four questions focus on whether they eat on campus and whether they would try the vegetarian food, allowing Emma to see how successful she could be as a start up.
Task 2
There are a couple of different observation methods which I would conduct in order to discover how well Emma’s Café would potentially be. The first would to be to go into a few of the different café’s already on campus at the university, and for about an hour at a time just sit and observe what kinds of food people buy, such as how many people buy something healthy, and whether they are old or young, male or female, just to determine what type of person is more likely to go into Emma’s Café to begin with. The reason for this method is because it is in a busy place so there will be plenty of people to observe, but also I would not be bothering anybody as I would just be sitting taking notes. I would do this a couple of times in each café, then compare all of the results. Another method would be to go into each café and as the people working there if they would be able to note roughly how many people buy healthy food or meat, and whether they are again old, young, male or female, again over an hour period. This would help to determine numbers buying healthy food on a larger scale, as there would be more people working on it than just me, so I could be at one café while the other café’s could be helping. The problem with this method is that it is demanding more from the café employees, as they have enough to do, especially if it is a busy day for them. Lastly I could attempt to arrange some interviews with people and ask them the questions from the survey, because this way I would at least have quite a few surveys that have been taken seriously. The interviews would only be about 10 minutes long and then the person would be on their way again. The problem with this method would be actually getting people willing to come and be interviewed about their eating habits, as some people might see it as unnecessarily invasive. With all of these methods, if they work, I would be able to take all of my results and combine then and give the overall result to Emma, giving her an idea of how many customers she could potentially expect to see, and what type they would be, again old, young, male or female.
