Being in business is not merely opening garage doors or registering a business and leaving it at that, no! To be in business means just that – being in business, constantly reinvent your business and branch out to new profit generating, feasible businesses. What this means is that once you have begun something which will be your means of generating money you have to keep doing that in order for money to be pumped in, when I say something I do not mean getting a job for a salary, I mean selling a product and / rendering a service for a profit. Previously i wanted to sell and maintain water dispensers,, with that in mind, I want to start making (manufacture) and selling (distribute) of muffins to students of Vaal University of Technology and North West University.
What I will need to for this business is, like every business, capital, I need money to make money. I will need to take from the monthly allowance of R500.00 which comes from my father. In that R500 I will need a mere R120.00 to contribute to the R500.00 from the student fund aid which is for groceries and toiletries. Which leaves me with R380.00 to buy the ingredients needed to bake the muffins. To start off with I want to give it a trail run by selling the most popular muffin flavour – chocolate chip flavour.
The Ingredients and Tools
I will use convenient baking method. I cannot bake so I will be using the ready-made muffin batters which are sold approximately at R25.00 for 500g, this means I can purchase up to 2-3 packs of the easy-mix batter. I will need to spend exactly R88.00 going home to fetch the pans using taxis however I cut that down to R57.00 using the trains, so that means muffin pans will cost me R57.00. I will need paper cupcake cases which are sold at R24.00 for 100 pieces. I reside in a VUT main residence which have working stoves and rent is not paid from my own pocket. Although later I will need a big Tupperware container which ideally can store 60 muffins at a time, a 10l, but for starters I will use what I have which are 2l Tupperware containers. They carry up to 8 muffins.
Recap: 500g muffin easy-mix batter = 25.00
Approximately 3 x 8 pans = 57.00
100pcs paper cupcake cases = R24.00
The muffins will be sold at R4.00 per cake. If they are to make a profit I need to sell 50 to make a day’s R50.00 profit from a single pack of 500g muffin batter. Considering that I can bake 16 muffins in 20-25 minutes. I can bake 48 muffins in an hour or hour and a quarter at maximum. Now R4 x 48 muffins = R192.00 - translated: that is R192.00 gross profit. I can double manufacturing time to two hours and a half which means double the production and double the gross profit, the total rounds to R384.00. The net profit I get from that is R172.00, which is only from a day’s work.
As previously stated that the primary flavour will be chocolate chip flavour I will first sell that the product to student at the main residence going door-to-door or the more stylistic and favoured approach amongst the black youth (dominant at residence), scream out the product and price in a melodic, rhythmic manner. I will walk through corridors of all the residences three times a week on the same days; Wednesdays, Fridays (after school hours) and Sundays (in the afternoon), the other days I will sell from my room. I will sell on campus as well during my 12:00 – 13:00 break pending the campuses administration’s decision. After some time (when Dr Muffin reaches makes R1000.00 a week – which depends on how fast the muffins catch on to the students) I will be baking three times the production from initial which will be sold on a neighbouring university residence where I have a friend who is willing to sell to his fellow students. He says he will accept R200.00 each every second week (bi-weekly), I will be paying him from the profits I personally made, he will have to pay me exactly the amount of the muffins I set for him, for example, when I give him 40 muffins (four assorted flavours) that translates to 40 muffins x R4 = R160.00
The look of the business will be clean, simple yet stylistic… I want to be known as Dr Muffin, the business will be Dr Muffin. When going around I will be wearing a plain, black apron, later I will put Dr Muffin with a muffin logo in front so people passing me will identify me from far and from near they will immediately know what product I have in the containers. The block in which I reside in will always be clean because when customers come in to buy from my room they need to be satisfied with the environment in which their food is being made. This is crucial in a sense that the customers come back due to the cleanliness of the environment. The European Commission states that no matter how innovative the product, if the market does not demand the product it will not make a sustainable business (2001-2005: 25). I will personally take care of the kitchen and ask the gentlemen in the block to clean after themselves each time they cook or wash dishes.
Dr Muffin will have a savings account where strictly all of its net profits will be deposited into for I cannot keep it in my possession, I will be tempted to use its profits for personal miscellaneous use. A bank account that will be registered under me as a private person and not under Dr Muffin as a business person, this is because the business will not be able to pay for the interest rates charged on an entity as yet. This savings account will be in a different banking institution from my personal savings account.
Dr Muffin will not be a seasonal business, it will be operational throughout the year and upon customers’ requests new flavours, such as blueberry, will be introduced in accordance to the majority. Dr Muffin seems a lucrative business because when talking to prospective customers they seem to be happy about the prices.The market of Dr Muffin is targeted at the students of VUT and North West University main residence.
