Amy Gracia
West House
Topic: Independent Bakery Distribution
Essential Question: What is most important to running a successful bakery distribution company?

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Fourth Interview Questions

1. What is most important to running a successful bakery distribution company?
2. What do you think makes this bakery successful?
3. What kinds of things have changed since the bakery first opened?..the way you market. the way you make your product.
4. What makes your product a quality product?
5. What type of relationship do you have with your employees and how do you maintain it?
6. How do you keep your employees motivated? What are some of the things you try and do to keep them happy?
7. What advice would you give to someone who wants to run their own bakery?
8. What type of competition have you had to face? How did you handle it?
9. What kind of relationship do you have with your customers? How do you maintain it?
10. What do you do to attract new customers?
11. What time of year is the bast time for your bakery? Why do you think that is?
12. What time of year is the worst? What do you do to prepare for that?
13. What are your bakeries strengths and weaknesses?
14. How do you market your bakery/products? How do you know each method is effective?
15. What are some of your future business plans/goals? How do you plan to reach them?
16. What’s been your most successful strategy in building your business so far? 
17. What kinds of contracts do you have with people you work with now?
18. How has new technology affected your business?
19. How do you find employees to continue making your quality product?
20. How do you test new products? Do you get special requests by customers?

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Independent Component 2

1) Discuss possible ideas you have to complete this requirement?
I will continue to do service learning and bake. I am also once again going to try finding a business class to take.
2) How will these idea(s) help answer your EQ?
Each time I bake a get a little more experience and practice of my own. It helps me see what each ingredient does and what makes a quality product. A business class will help me learn what it takes to run a business of my own. 

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Final Draft

A. Introduction (1-2 min) 
  1. My EQ "What is most important to running a successful bakery distribution company?"
  2. Ask 3 people what they think are important factors of running a business. 
  3. I chose to talk about the importance of location in running a bakery, because it has a great impact on the success of your business. Deciding on the perfect area is one of the first steps in starting your business.
  4. My objective: After listening to my presentation, I want my audience to have a better understanding of what makes a good location for any type of business, specially for a bakery, and what factors can affect choosing a location.  I also want them to be able to determine what the best location in a given situation would be. 
B. Body (8-9 min)
  1. 4 types of location 
    • homebased 
    • retail
    • mobile
    • commercial 
  2. Factors to consider: Demographics
    • affordable
    • accessible
    • pedestrian traffic and target audience-----> Collecting Data of area. 
      • Primary and secondary
    • parking
    • location history
    • competition
    • business requirements and equipment needs
      • distribution- market coverage 
  3. Activity (6 min)
    • Partners will be given different locations and they have to determine if it appears to be a good location. Then they have to answer what kinds of things would they need to know that they can't tell from the picture to determine if it really is a good location. Discuss each location as a class.
C. Conclusion (1 min)
  1. Location, location, location! All work put into running the bakery may not matter if the location is not right. As you can tell with the activity, there is a lot you have to consider and pay attention to when choosing a location. You can't just look at a location and know it will be successful. 
  2. Most important source- to be determined.
  3. This semester I plan to bring together all of my business research with my baking research and make it apply better to my EQ.
  4. Q&A
D. Materials 
  1. 4-5 locations for 13 partners
  2. Powerpoint: Projector.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Independent Study 1

1. 11/20: Zebra cake- 4 hrs. 1/29: Baked bread- 2 hrs of labor. 2/2: Star cake- 4 hrs. 2/8: Baked bread-2 hrs. 2/9: Baked Brownies- 1 hr. Additional Service learning: Saturday's 8-12.

2.




3. Literal 
a) I, Amy Gracia, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.
b) I am doing additional service learning hours, and my total right now is 72 hours. I am also baking different cakes for birthdays and other goods in my free time. I have also been learning and baking bread as part of my science fair project. Although it takes 2 days to bake bread, the labor time is only about 2 hours.

Interpretive
For the cakes, the time comes from the decorating part. That takes time, and it is also a learning process. The more practice at it, the better you will get. At my service learning, they sometimes allow me to roll the dough.  I am doing a step in the baking process, and that has also helped me for when I am making my own bread.

Applied
This has helped me with my EQ because I'm learning hands on techniques of how to bake as well as decorate. Discovering the best techniques is essential to defining my answer of having a quality product. So now, I hope that when I define what a quality product is, I can use what I learned from my independent task as a personal experience to support it. 

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Presentation 2 Rough Draft

A. Introduction (1-2 min) 
  1. My EQ "What is most important to running a successful bakery distribution company?"
  2. Ask 3 people what they think are important factors of running a business. 
  3. I chose to talk about the importance of location in running a bakery, because it has a great impact on the success of your business. Deciding on the perfect area is one of the first steps in starting your business.
  4. My objective: After listening to my presentation, I want my audience to have a better understanding of what makes a good location for any type of business, specially for a bakery, and what factors can affect choosing a location.  I also want them to be able to determine what the best location in a given situation would be. 
B. Body (8-9 min)
  1. 5 types of location 
    • homebased 
    • retail
    • mobile
    • commercial 
    • industrial
  2. Factors to consider 
    • affordable
    • demographics - accessible, parking, pedestrian traffic and target audience, location history, competition.
    • business requirements and equipment needs
      • distribution- market coverage 
  3. Collecting Data of target audience and area
    • primary and secondary
  4. Activity (6 min)
    • Partners will be given different situations that entrepreneurs have to go through.  They will have to determine the known factors of the situation, and if the location is the best choice or what they think would be the best location, and why or why not. 
C. Conclusion (1 min)
  1. Location, location, location! All work put into running the bakery may not matter if the location is not right. 
  2. Most important source- to be determined.
  3. This semester I plan to bring together all of my business research with my baking research and make it apply better to my EQ.
  4. Q&A
D. Materials 
  1. 4-5 created scenarios for 13 partners
  2. possible projector.