3.2.1 Internal Stakeholders
An advertisement for the Transition to Work program that our team
is a good fit. Our goal in interviewing these employees was to learn more about the types of fields that the students are generally looking into post- program, get their views on whether certificates or experience is more valuable to employers, and to learn more about what skills employers are specifically looking for in their hirees. Another employee that we interviewed was Adrian. Adrian is the team leader for all of the Transition to Work program coaches. More specifically, he keeps track of all of the statistics of the program and ensures that the program meets all of the Key
Performance Indicators (KPI) set by the government. Our main focus in Adrian’s interview was to learn more about the success of the Transition to Work program currently and see if he felt that our program would improve the students job placement rates. We also wanted his views on certificates versus experience and see where the program is lacking and preventing youth from getting job placement. The last employee that we interviewed was Mark. Mark is the head of social enterprises for the Brotherhood. In interviewing Mark, we hoped to learn more about the current social enterprises and the reason why the original food based social enterprise failed at the Brotherhood. We also wanted to learn the steps necessary to start a social enterprise and get an insight on exactly what we need to present to the Brotherhood in order to get the funds needed to start this specific social enterprise. With all of our employee interviews, we were mainly hoping to learn more about how the programs are currently run, the success of the youth, and how social enterprises have come about at the Brotherhood in the past.
With external stakeholders, such as local restaurants and community members, we conducted surveys, as we found it to be more beneficial to receive a broader
understanding of their views as a whole. For community members, we wanted to get a general sense of what kinds of foods they would like to see available in the area, as well as what are the local hotspots for food traffic and at what time of day. We wanted to gage the local interest for the different models such as a food truck or pop-up restaurant. We conducted these surveys by sending Google Forms to popular local Facebook groups, specifically the Frankston Community Noticeboard and the Frankston City Noticeboard. Results from this would allow us to determine the public perception of food trucks and their interest in one’s success. When combining the results of our research with the results of the survey, we can find the intersection between what type of food the public wants and the type of food that would be successful within the Frankston region.
With food businesses, we wanted to gain a better understanding of the types of food in the area as well as the general cost of items. Since the final training kitchen we propose will be located within Frankston, we decided it was in our best interest to
determine the food culture within the Frankston area separately to determine if there were gaps within the market for specific types of food businesses. Through our research we determined that there are 176 food businesses in Frankston ranging from small cafes to full-service restaurants. An analysis of these food businesses allows the gap within the food market to become apparent, which can help us in determining the type of food the Brotherhood should sell.
3.2.2 External Stakeholders
A local café that our team went to frequently when visiting Frankston
A feasibility study and business plan are the main deliverables of our team’s project to the
Brotherhood of St Laurence. Throughout the process, we continuously evaluated the feasibility of different directions for the training kitchen and social enterprise initiative. Throughout different iterations of the
feasibility study, we performed varying cost and market analyses.
The main goal of the Brotherhood is to provide vocational education for at-risk youth in the Frankston Mornington Peninsula through a program that will ultimately break-even. We undertook the feasibility analysis by first identifying different business models for the training kitchen. The business models that our team analyzed would eventually determine the best model for the Brotherhood. The resulting business will be what ultimately brings in income to the site in order to break-even. The possible business models that our team identified are food trucks, traveling food cafes, pop-up restaurants, a meal preparation kitchen, and a possible entrepreneurship model including a commissary or shared kitchen. Food trucks were an appealing option because all of the preparation can be done at the Brotherhood’s commissary kitchen (a place of preparation for food trucks), and the truck can then drive all over the FMP and Melbourne regions to get customers. They would also be extremely popular on the surrounding university campuses. A pop-up restaurant is a restaurant that occurs in unexpected places for a limited time. Usually, they allow chefs to showcase their talents. A business model focused around these pop-up kitchens that the Brotherhood could employ would be a small restaurant that features a different menu designed and cooked by one of the youth every week, meaning that the restaurant is a different pop-up weekly. An entrepreneurship model is similar to that of CommonWealth Kitchen, in which food business are encouraged to grow and scale in this incubator space. Another area our team to explored is offering a community garden, which could potentially help bring more locals into the center and help create a better sense of community, while teaching the youth at the center where their food comes from and how to make healthy meals.
Our team presented the identified business models to the Brotherhood staff. After seeing the High Street Centre and the commercial kitchen facility and having discussions with the Brotherhood staff, we chose to narrow down our focus and research on mobile food businesses. The
commercial kitchen facility is used throughout the day to provide breakfast and lunch to the David Scott School students, which would prove difficult to set up a traditional restaurant in the space or sell any food out of the space. Due to the popularity of mobile food businesses in Australia and the flexibility that they provide, we decided to explore the feasibility of a mobile social enterprise more in-depth.