Project 1 focuses on an empanada food truck where you will create a video presentation in PowerPoint (with audio), Zoom, Vimeo, Prezi, or as a URL link to your YouTube.
For this assignment, you are the business owner of the four empanada food trucks. This business has four empanada food trucks that are spread across different areas of Boston. You are worried about your business’s growth potential since you are starting to notice that Boston is not only undergoing more growth due to other food trucks selling a variety of foods but also becoming saturated with competition from fast-food and trendy restaurants. The increasing competition has you rethinking your business’s strategic direction, including mission, vision, and goals, to better position your food truck business to compete and grow.
For this assignment, you should complete the following tasks:
- As you approach defining your strategic direction, you realize that you have always referred to your business as “The Empanada Truck.” Now, you want to establish your business’s official identity. Give your empanada food truck business a formal name and develop a mission statement. Recall that the mission statement is all about purpose. Your mission statement should define what your business exists to do, and for whom.
- Identify and discuss the target market for your empanada food truck business. What are the characteristics of the ideal customer your business can reach and how?
- Define and explain your empanada stand concept and differentiation. What makes your empanada food truck business unique compared to your competition?
- Conduct applicable research to perform a SWOT analysis to understand your food truck business and the changing landscape in your target market and fast-food industry. Based on what you learn, use researched evidence to discuss the following
- Strengths: Analyze the unique strengths of an empanada food truck business.
- Weaknesses: Identify the classic weaknesses of an empanada food truck business.
- Opportunities: Explore innovative opportunities in your market or industry that you can take advantage of to grow your empanada food truck business.
- Threats: Identify potential threats in your market or industry that you will need to overcome to grow your empanada food truck business.
- Craft a vision statement that paints a picture of your long-term aspirations for your empanada business over the next three years. The following are some sample vision statements:
- Apple vision statement: “To make the best products on earth and to leave the world better than we found it.”
- Southwest vision statement: “To be the world’s most loved, most efficient, and most profitable airline.”
- Amazon vision statement: “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”
- SpaceX vision statement: “SpaceX was founded with the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not.”
- Uber vision statement: “Transportation as reliable as running water, everywhere for everyone”
- Based on your empanada business mission and vision, develop two specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives that align with your mission and vision (for example: “Increase sales 15% by 12/2026”).
- For each SMART goal, identify at least three actions you will need to complete to achieve your goal.
- Please add a summary/conclusion slide. The conclusion is intended to emphasize the purpose/significance of the analysis, note the significance/consequence of the findings, and indicate the wider applications derived from the main points presented for your business growth potential.
- Following the conclusion, and on a separate slide, please add the list of references used in the presentation.
Assignment Best Practices
Critical thinking and analysis are integral to Project 1. In analyzing the internal and external environments for the SWOT analysis, you are expected to perform thorough research that is related to the fast-food industry and empanada market. When researching, breaking down the material is critical for an accurate analysis. Include relevant data.
Ensure clear alignment between the mission, vision, goals, and action plan activities.
Use your own voice for the presentation audio and stay within the presentation limits which is no less than 6 minutes/10 slides and or more than 8 minutes/15 slides.
Use creativity when developing your pitch and designing the presentation. The keys to a TED Talk are relevant presentations that are engaging, captivating, and succinct.
You are expected to present information with supporting ideas, reasoning, and conclusions using resources that include course materials and thorough research. A variety of source materials are expected, and what is presented must be relevant and applicable to the topic being discussed. You must demonstrate the ability to think clearly and rationally, showing an understanding of the logical connections between the ideas presented from the research and course materials, and their applicability to the mission, vision, goals, and action plans.
The presentation should be your own original work.
Resources
The university library is a source for information. You can find relevant information required for industry research by using the Library Business Research page. In addition, extensive library resources and services are available online, 24 hours a day, seven days a week to support you in your studies. The UMGC library also provides research assistance in creating search strategies, selecting relevant databases, and evaluating and citing resources in various formats via its “Ask a Librarian” service.
This Project is a video presentation in which you pitch your business’s mission, vision, SWOT analysis, goals, and action plan. Your pitch will lay out how you are positioning your empanada food truck business to grow in a saturated fast-food market. You will perform applicable research and develop a video presentation of the task items 1–9 above that will include a cover page. The video presentation should be creative, engaging, and inspirational like a TED Talk, and be 6 to 8 minutes long.
The presentation must be professional in appearance and include visuals, as appropriate, such as graphics, images, tables, and graphs. The slides should flow and transition in an organized manner with one idea/concept leading to the next.
Please begin the presentation with an introduction that clearly and succinctly explains what you intend to cover in your video presentation. The presentation should end with a conclusion/summary slide
