GDB3023 ENGINEERING ECONOMICS AND ETREPRENEURSHIP

GROUP PROJECT REPORT

ALI ABU CAFÉ

BY

NAME ID PHONE. NO. DEPARTMENT

AHMAD ‘ADNIN FIRDAUS 19791 0189534175 CIVIL ENG.
PYAE PHYO PAING 19528 01151503043 CIVIL ENG.
HANMUHAMMET GAYOV 19601 0194828274 CIVIL ENG.
DOVRAN CHARYEVV 17012 0197622144 CIVIL ENG.

UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI PETRONAS

BANDAR SRI ISKANDAR
31750 TRONOH
PERAK DARUL RIDZUAN
 ALI ABU CAFÉ

ENGINEERING ECONOMIC AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

GDB3023

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1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Deepest appreciation goes to our lecturer AP. Dr. Zulkipli Ghazali for providing guides
and support in order to complete this group project which is an astounding project that
provokes entrepreneurship skills and allow us to sharpen the skills by applying the
knowledges in the real world.

This project has allowed us to understand and to take the responsibility and see
opportunity as business-oriented students which will definitely benefits us in future as
we graduate and becoming business-oriented industrial player which is one of the main
goal of University Teknologi Petronas which is to produce business minded graduates.

Secondly, we would like to thanks to everyone supporting, guiding us whether intention

or intentionally prior completing this project. Special thanks to Anis Alyani, business
owner of Asian & Western Fusion Kiosk, for providing us with all the necessary data
required.
2 CONTENTS

1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ........................................................................................ 3
2 CONTENTS ......................................................................................................... 4
3 LIST OF FIGURES................................................................................................. 6
4 LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................. 6
5 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 7
5.1 Existing Company Background ...............................................................................8
5.1.1 Existing Company services ..................................................................................... 9
5.2 7 Types of entrepreneur ........................................................................................9
6 ALI ABU CAFÉ BACKGROUND............................................................................ 11
6.1 Company Details ................................................................................................. 12
6.2 Company Services ............................................................................................... 13
6.3 Company Menu ................................................................................................... 13
6.4 Rationale on why the business is chosen .............................................................. 14
7 METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................... 15
7.1 Key milestone ..................................................................................................... 17
7.2 Target market and positioning of the product ...................................................... 19
8 SWOT ANALYSIS............................................................................................... 20
8.1 Strength .............................................................................................................. 21
8.2 Weakness............................................................................................................ 21
8.3 Threat ................................................................................................................. 21
8.4 Opportunity ........................................................................................................ 22
9 (7 STEPS APPROACH) MODEL ........................................................................... 23
9.1 Set out clear objectives ........................................................................................ 24
9.2 Attracting customers ........................................................................................... 24
9.2.1 Marketing strategy ............................................................................................... 24
9.3 Keep the customer and make them loyal ............................................................. 28
9.4 Managing customers and business growth ........................................................... 28
9.5 Outperforms rivals .............................................................................................. 28
9.6 Conduct proper system and operations ................................................................ 28
9.7 Evaluation and taking corrective action ................................................................ 29
10 SURVEY RESULTS.............................................................................................. 29

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11 CONLUSION ..................................................................................................... 36
12 APPENDICES .................................................................................................... 37
13 REFERENCE ...................................................................................................... 38

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3 LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE NO. NAME PAGE

1 AL-MARJAN MENU 7
2 ALI ABU CAFÉ LOGO 10
3 METHODOLOGY 15
4 SWOT ANALYSIS 18
5 7 STEPS APPROACH MODEL 21
6 7PS MARKETING MIX 24

4 LIST OF TABLES

TABLE NO. NAME PAGE

1 KEY MILESTONE 16

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5 INTRODUCTION

This report illustrates how an Entrepreneurship Project can be carried out. It emphasis on
turning an existing business into an enterprise. In this project, students are required to:

 Identify a business of interest that as if you are going to open a small business of
less than 10 employees.
 Understudy the business by looking at the various opportunities available in the
market place.
 Consider ways in dealing with the various stakeholders of the entrepreneur
 Identify the opportunities and the business model understudied
 Identify problems faced by the entrepreneur and the business
 Analyze ways to develop and strengthen the business
 Create a strategic business to turn the current business into an enterprise.
 Write a report on present findings and make recommendations.

The chosen business of this project is Restaurant Al-Marjan inside Universiti Teknologi
Petronas. It is one of the popular restaurant that serves different types of cuisine compared
to other restaurants in UTP therefore it has some degree of uniqueness that makes it
becomes popular.

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5.1 Existing Company Background

An entrepreneur is a person who organizes and operates a business, taking on greater than
normal financial risks. In this project, we had a chance for interviewing Mr Maswari
Mansor, the successful entrepreneur which is the founder of Al Marjan Arabic restaurant
allocated in UTP, Perak. He currently owns 3 franchise with more than 20 employees.
One is in UTP, Perak, the second one is in KL and the last one is in UA. We will further
explain his successful story and how he managed to expand his career from a small
personal business to a family scale business and eventually become franchise down the
entire report.

Al-Marjan restaurant began operating on 2017 in Universiti Teknologi Petronas,

Perak with a vision of serving food with highest quality of Lebanese tradition food. The
company serves various types of traditional Lebanese cuisines with remarkable
presentation and very delightful environment.

FIGURE 1: AL-MARJAN MENU

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5.1.1 Existing Company services

Fine Dining

 Providing excellent service for dining

 High quality food
 Good food presentation
 Provides heavy meal to light meal
 Traditional Lebanese cuisines
 Deserts
 Vegetarian food also served

Excellent atmosphere

 Comfortable restaurant atmosphere

 Very relaxing and joyful experience

5.2 7 Types of entrepreneur

There are generally 7 type of entrepreneur existed on this world of business. (Chou, 2015).
According to Chou, types of entrepreneur we are likely to encounter are:

1. The Solo-Service Entrepreneur, usually a sole proprietorship (just him/herself)

with friends as customers. It’s most often a service that requires time but little or
no investment.

2. The Commodity Entrepreneur who make healthy investments to start

something that is somewhat saturated in the market which refers to most

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 restaurants and coffee shops, as well as common commodity businesses are within
this category.

3. The Network Marketing & Franchise Entrepreneur which is the pyramid way
of doing business, where businesses are run via recruiting other peoples to run
divisions under the entrepreneur.

4. The Opportunity Entrepreneur who looks at the newest trends, figures out what
works, and do it. They usually identify some competitive advantage and start
something that exists with decent and large initial investment.

5. The Innovation Entrepreneur who creates something new, something no one

else has ever done in an industry.

6. The High Tech Entrepreneur who create and shape the whole industry instead
of creating improvements or introducing something good in an industry.

7. The Escape Entrepreneur who go on their ventures because they simply want to
make a lot of money and/or want to be their own boss.

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6 ALI ABU CAFÉ BACKGROUND

FIGURE 2: ALI ABU CAFÉ LOGO

Based on analysis and discussion, food chain is the most reasonable and appealing to
invest as an entrepreneur. To invest or start a business in Universiti Teknologi Petronas,
few researches has to be done and analyzed to ensure successful business or profitable
business in a long run. From the findings, students prefer and seems to enjoy café type
food chain and therefore a 24 hour café is proposed in Universiti Teknologi Petronas
campus name Ali Abu Café nearby the Maybank. Details are provided below.

The team consist of 3 members will be holding a particular responsibility to run

the business efficiently. Ali Abu Café will mainly focus on customers’ needs and will try
it best to fulfill the needs. The idea is to ensure customer satisfaction in every aspect
possible whereby any suggestions from the customers will be taken seriously.

To ensure the best quality with the best price, Ali Abu Café will be importing raw
materials directly from the farmers and suppliers such as coffee beans and bread. This is
to ensure the materials are fresh and cheap but at the same time to support local business
such as bread maker. These beans will be processed in Ali Abu Café coffee machine such
as dolce gusto to achieve the best coffee.

Therefore, Ali Abu Café also will use high quality coffee machine to produce the
best result in efficient way whereby coffee could be produce very fast but less
maintenance required. By doing so, these coffee can be mixed with any other types of

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ingredients to achieve various types of coffee drinks. By focusing mainly on coffee, Ali
Abu Café could deliver the maximum quality coffee beverages in UTP operating at 24
hours a day.

Ali Abu Café also will be providing maximum comfortability for students to
enjoy their time at the café either doing their work or discussing among them. The café
will provide high speed Wi-Fi, wall plug for laptops, desk and comfortable sofas. Fans
are provided at the exterior area while air conditioner is provided at interior area.

6.1 Company Details

Name of Business
Ali Abu Café

Address
Universiti Teknologi Petronas
Lobby Area, Student Centre
UTP, Bandar Sri Iskandar,
Perak, 31750 Teronoh

Contact Person
Ali Abu (Co-Founder) - 0189534175

Hanchez Tarantino (Co-Founder) - 0194828274

American Pie (Co-Founder) - 01151503043

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6.2 Company Services

The products that will be served for 24 hours a day are various types of coffee, cakes,
sandwiches and cookies. Types of services provided are as below:

 Fast casual
Providing the best coffee, cakes and sandwiches.

 Reading section
Students could enjoy the atmosphere while reading a book at a comfortable sofa.

 Hangout section
Students could discuss any work among them whether at inside or outside café
because many tables and chairs are provided.

6.3 Company Menu

Coffee Menu:
 Latte
 Espresso
 Mocha
 Cappuccino
 Green Tea

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Cake Menu:
 Red Velvet
 White Chocolate Cake
 Lemon Cake
 Cheese Cake
 Chocolate Cake

Sandwiches:
 Chicken Sandwiches
 Tuna Sandwiches
 Egg Sandwiches
 Cheese Sandwiches

Cookies:
 Chocolate Chip
 Double Chocolate Chip
 Oat Chocolate Chip

6.4 Rationale on why the business is chosen

Since UTP is lacking of proper coffee shop in terms of good quality of coffee,
reasonable price, nice and comfortable environment, it can be proposed that opening the
coffee shop would be considered as long term productive business because many students
would enjoy this service. A good coffee shop should has a good environment with air
conditioner, fragrance and then comfortable place to do student’s own activities.

Among the criteria which has been stated above, the price is very significant based
on the surveys. Therefore, the coffee, cake, sandwich and cookies are serve with very high
quality and at the same time with reasonable price below market price.

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 Besides serving good quality coffee and cookies, the Ali Abu Café can be used as
a discussion port and meeting. Since there is no comfortable 24 hours place to enjoy the
discussion therefore this is a good idea to establish the new business.

7 METHODOLOGY

In order to achieve the objectives of this project, a careful planning is required.

Firstly, a concise questionnaire was developed. The questionnaire was design in a way
that once filled, a clear business trend could be developed. However, the questions should
not include questions on confidential data of the company. Moreover, long questions tend
to frustrate the person who is being interviewed. Therefore, the questions are carefully
being made.

Next step is to search for an entrepreneur with the minimum of 10 employees. To

do so, the group search nearby shops to find a fitting profile. At the same time, the other
members search the internet for the local companies and entrepreneurs in nearby location.
Those companies and shops were contacted to confirm the availability. The most suitable
option was chosen for interview. The interview took place in entrepreneur work place.
The survey form was filled up by the shop’s owner.

The next step was to compile the answer and process them. The most important
step in this project was analyzing the data. Without analyzing, the data itself is useless.
Therefore, the business trends and plans were developed. Once the trends were developed,
the problem identification became easier. The gaps and shortcomings tend to be more
obvious in the trends. A proper solution was suggested as a result. The flowchart of the
project is shown in figure below:

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 Proposed action

Identify problem statement

Developing the questionnare

Finding the local entrepreneur

Finding the local entrepreneur

Interviewing the entrepreneur

Does he/she has more than 10 employee?

Analyzing the gathered data

Create survey form for our business

Distribute the survey online

Analyzing the gathered data

Justification

Conclusion

FIGURE 3: METHODOLOGY

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7.1 Key milestone

November 2017
Task
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 30

Understanding the
project scope

Developing the
questioners

Interviewing

Compiling the data

Developing the
Business Trends

Problem
Identification

Mitigation and
conclusion

Submission of the
report

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TABLE 1: KEY MILESTONE

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7.2 Target market and positioning of the product

The main target market of this business is UTP Students and staff but the main
focus is on students’ interest since students will mostly be on campus most of the time
compared to staffs. This is because most engineering students are having load of stress
due to tons of projects, assignments, exams, group works and losing streaks in online
games therefore they need a place to relax and having a good place to do their assignments
or discussion peacefully while having a good cup of inexpensive coffees.

The positioning of our products and shop in market are good because it will be the
first coffee shop in Universiti Teknologi Petronas. Other restaurants does not provide
good coffee and the environment is not comfortable which is very crucial for students or
anyone to enjoy their coffee and focus on their job. Online marketing on social media will
be done to attract students and to distribute information regarding the cafe menu and
promotion.

Promotion such as 20% discount or buy 5 drinks to get one free drink coupons
meaning if a student buys five drinks, a free drink will be rewarded in the next purchase.
By doing so, this will attract students to visit the coffee shop frequently.

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8 SWOT ANALYSIS

SWOT analysis is an examination of an organization’s internal strengths and

weaknesses, its opportunities for growth and improvement, and the threats the external
environment presents to its survival. It is best conducted by a group of people with
different perspectives and stakes in your company. Management, sales, customer
service, and even customers can all contribute valid insight. Moreover, the SWOT
analysis process is an opportunity to bring your team together and encourage their
participation in and adherence to your company’s resulting strategy.

STRENGTH

24 hour services
In-Campus
Comfortable

OPPORTUNITY THREAT
Focus on coffee quality McCafe
and the ambiance of the Starbucks
SWOT
café

WEAKNESS

Not many choices drink

Only light meal

FIGURE 4: SWOT ANALYSIS

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8.1 Strength

Coffee is one of the essential beverage here whereby most of students consumed a lot
and are depending on it to stay alert and active whole day and night. However, good
coffee can only be found outside the campus at nearby McCafe in McDonald and
Starbucks which is far away. The only nearest choice available are the coffees in can
and in restaurant which is not fresh, unhealthy and untasteful. By having the only coffee
shop solely focusing on serving freshly brewed coffee inside UTP would be a great
advantage as a first mover in such market.

8.2 Weakness

While other café might be offering wide range of coffees, Ali Abu Café will only be
offering very few choices of coffees because the main focus is to ensure the coffees
brewed at highest quality possible plus to ensure minimal design to follow the overall
concept of the café which is to serve the highest quality instead wide varieties of coffee
since many varieties of menu would bring up the cost to ensure fresh ingredients always
available.

8.3 Threat

The threat to Ali Abu Café would definitely be McCafe by McDonald and Starbucks
since most UTP students would go there to get coffees based on our surveys. These
places have earned their names among UTP students since they serve quite good coffees
with good services.

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8.4 Opportunity

One of the most obvious advantage of Ali Abu Café is reachability due to suitable
location inside the university itself. Not only it located in front of V2 hostel but it is also
close to academic buildings and offices thus making it one of the easiest place to grab a
cup of coffee. Apart from easy access, Ali Abu Café also will be providing the first café
operating at 24 hours a day providing high speed WI-FI and comfortable place to read
and study for individually or discussion. These are the most valued features that can
only be found at Ali Abu Café,

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9 (7 STEPS APPROACH) MODEL

The seven-step method is a descriptive approach which reflects on how the efficiency
often changes but denies the need for the change to occur in such a way. In most times,
not all the seven-steps will be useful for a certain business and the sequence of the steps
will differ from one to another studio or organization. The figure below shows the 7-Step
Approach Model for the transformation of entrepreneurship.

SET OUT OBJECTIVES

EVALUATION & CORRECTIVE ACTION

ATTRACT & PLEASE

CUSTOMERS

CONDUCT PROPER SYSTEM &

OPERATIONS
MAKE CUSTOMERS
LOYAL

MANAGE BUSINESS OUTPERFORMS RIVALS

GROWTH

FIGURE 5: 7 STEPS APPROACH MODEL

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9.1 Set out clear objectives

Ali Abu Café vision is all about serving the students and staff therefore placing the
customers at first. The main objective of Ali Abu Café is to be recognized among UTP
students and stuff to increase the fame so that the Café could further be expand into
different universities. By optimizing the profit, we could serve the best quality of products
at a very low price to ensure long-term profit and recognition.

9.2 Attracting customers

Ali Abu Café also would invest heavily in marketing to ensure the café is well known
with cheap high quality coffees to attract more students and stuff and at the same will
produce marketing strategies which will be discussed below.

9.2.1 Marketing strategy

The marketing strategy is derived out from a close and comprehensive research of the
market. Researches were done to gather information regarding the demand and what do
people want and what is the best offer could be implemented to optimize profit. Few
market strategies that are selected:

9.2.1.1 Direct Marketing

Direct marketing occurs by directly distribute fliers, brochures and posters. Doing this
will greatly affect the nearby students and staff hence becoming potential customers.

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9.2.1.2 Online Marketing

Online marketing will be the most heavily focus on since informations can be easily be
transmitted in social Medias such as facebook.com, Instagram.com and twitter.com
since these social media has higher user margin consist of students. A Facebook page,
Instagram and twitter account will created as official page of Ali Abu Café whereby all
the great news and promotion will be updated daily.

9.2.1.3 Close Range Marketing

Since Ali Abu Café will be providing high speed WI-FI, therefore promotion could be
delivered using WI-FI whereby any customers or person connected to Ali Abu Café WI-
FI will be prompt with promotion message whereby a purchase has to be made to get a
code for accessing the WI-FI.

9.2.1.4 7Ps of marketing mix

The marketing mix is also called the 4Ps and the 7Ps. The 4Ps are price, place, product
and promotion. The services marketing mix is also called the 7Ps and includes the
addition of process, people and physical evidence.

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 FIGURE 6: 7PS MARKETING MIX

9.2.1.4.1 Product

All products that will be serve in Ali Abu Café is based on extensive research and analysis.

9.2.1.4.2 Price

To obtain the best price, Ali Abu Café will be dealing directly with farmers, fisherman,
butcher and bakery to obtain fresh raw material at a very low price.

9.2.1.4.3 Promotion

As mentioned earlier, many promotion will be applied such as coupon system, discounted
refill and many more to come.

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9.2.1.4.4 Place

The place is beside Maybank in Universiti Teknologi Petronas. Could be considered as

one of the best place for a coffee shop since it is very accessible from both students and
staff.

9.2.1.4.5 People

Two workers will be available at all times for 24 hours. It will be 8 hours shift job consist
of senior and junior baristas. Ali Abu Café will strictly choose the most friendly barista
and will allow students to work part time as junior barista.

9.2.1.4.6 Process

The process of purchasing is very easy at Ali Abu Café whereby cash and credit card will
be accepted as payment including the coupons.

9.2.1.4.7 Physical evidence

A physical evidence is crucial for to be recognized among customers, because a good café
should have own branding and signature. The physical evidence of Ali Abu Café is the
logo branding on the coffee cup and on the sandwiches wrappers.

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9.3 Keep the customer and make them loyal

In order to keep the customer loyal and regularly come to the café, Ali Abu Café would
have to serve the best quality products and the very low price. The café environment
should always be maintained to ensure cleanliness and comfortability. Apart from that
Coupon will be distributed with every purchase of coffee. These 20% discount coupon
could be stack to five pieces of coupons becoming 100% discount hence getting a cup of
drink of any choice.

9.4 Managing customers and business growth

In order to manage customers, a senior barista which has barista background and a junior
barista with no working background will be employed to ensure the customers could be
treated properly and at the same time providing opportunity for students to earn money
and experiences. A database will be developed to handle the customers’ coupons and
finance.

9.5 Outperforms rivals

Ali Abu Café will do extensive researches and surveys to give the fullest to the customers
and improving over time to ensure competitors could be eliminated.

9.6 Conduct proper system and operations

Ali Abu Café will have a proper managerial type of management consist of Human
resource department, finance department, logistic department and marketing department.
Although each department will most likely be in charge by one person at this early stage,
it still has its own responsibility toward the company. Each department will carries its
own operation and work together to ensure smooth workflow of Ali Abu Café.
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9.7 Evaluation and taking corrective action

By doing benchmarking, this would allow Ali Abu Café to see their position in the market
and would allow for improvement. This also would allow for corrective actions to correct
any flaw or deficiency in the services. Surveys will be carried out at every month to the
customers to see their opinions on anything that should be improved in the café. Apart
from that, suggestion box will be taken very seriously.

10 SURVEY RESULTS

The survey has been conducted in order to know the efficiency of the coffee and at the
same time the details of service. The survey includes 8 questions in it. In this section, the
results based on each question is discussed.

First of all, the questions about the personal profile is asked to know the age and gender
of the customers, so the design and service could be done based on the information. The
questions about the personal profile is shown below:

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It can be seen from the table above that majority of customers are university students.

The table shows that more than half of the university students are drinking coffee every
day. This can prove the efficiency of the coffee shop, since it will be visited daily, based
on the survey results.

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Based on this table it can be said that quality of the coffee is priority, since it comes even
before cheap price.

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One more result proving the quality is a priority. The priority sequence can be made from
this result, which is:

1. Coffee
2. Service
3. Convenience
4. Café concept
5. Environment
6. Price

The interior design and the menu will be made based on these responses. The business
will be more productive if it built based on what people prefer most.

This secton is for the interrior design of the coffee shop like it has been mentioned in
previous section. However, this is more into details. The results shown above show that
relaxing environment is more preferable for coffee shop.

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The purpose of this question to take a place in questionary is to determine the most
visited period of coffee shop. By knowing it, more employees can be set at that
particular time to serve customers to not let them wait for a long time.

Since, during exam periods, students stay up late to prepare for the upcoming exams or
simply some students prefer having coffee at late night, coffee shop can be open for 24
hour. The more service time, the more productive is business.

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By each cup of coffee bought, the customer will get a coupon 20 % off for the next cup.
Five coupon will make 1 free cup of coffee.

The second choice is, if the customer wants a refill, 30 % discount will be made for it.

First choice is more preferable for the studetns.

This table shows that students want the coffee price to be low. However, in the previous
results we saw that the quality is also very important. So, the Ali Abu coffee shop will
serve the high quality coffee with a reasonable price.

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35
The goal of last question is to determine the most visited existing coffee shops and make
Ali Abu coffee similar to its concept or apply any of its concept into this shop. From the
shown results, it can be seen that Starbucks is most visited coffee shop. The Ali Abu
coffee shop can be designed similar to it, at the same time, the snacks and cake types
will be served based on most preferable type.

11 CONLUSION

The business studied gave an insight into the restaurant working and management. Al
Marjan restaurant is indeed a good restaurant in the food business at the University
Teknologi Petronas. With this project, the group studied that importance of various
factors when opening and operating a business.

Coming up with the idea of the Ali Abu Café made us experience the procedure one
must go through when starting up a business. How important is it to have a clear
objective? How are the financials handled? The different marketing strategies and their
implementation was studied. This project really gave an understanding of the seven-
approach model. How is really helps in organizing the business and its requirements.
Moreover, the different strategies to overcome various challenges were studied. Such as
effective management of human resources, raw materials, sales strategies and many
more.

To put in a nutshell, the project made us experience the workings of an ongoing

business and the procedure of starting a new business. What are the general steps in
starting the business and how are different strategies chosen.

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12 APPENDICES

1. Survey form for interviewing.

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13 REFERENCE

1. Humphrey, Albert (December 2005). "SWOT Analysis for Management

Consulting" (PDF). SRI Alumni Newsletter. SRI International.
2. Mesly, Olivier (2017). Project feasibility – Tools for uncovering points of
vulnerability. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis, CRC Press, 546 pages, ISBN
9 781498 757911.

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