Expert Views On The Value Of Business Plans

I had just read the stories about restaurant gurus Bobby Flay and Steve Ells, and I must say it is truly inspirational to know how these men have succeeded in their field. I have known about Bobby Flay for a few years now and he really seems to know his stuff. Steve Ells on the other hand I did not know about, because I was not aware that he founded the Chipotle restaurant. It is amazing that Steve Ells started his business with an $85,000 loan from his father, and was able to get Chipotle off the ground.

According to Bobby Flay’s personal website (www.bobbyflay.com), he’s been in the culinary field since he was 17 years old which is astonishing to say the least. I can appreciate the fact that he owns more than one successful restaurant, and has been on three successful television shows as well. It seems that each project that he has been a part of is more successful than the previous one.

According to Forbes Magazine’s website (http://people.forbes.com/profile/steve-ells/19160), he is a graduate from my alma mater the University of Colorado. He got his start at Stars Restaurant in San Francisco and had worked for two years there. He realized early on that food should not be of a low quality or be ridiculously expensive. This is the backdrop to how Chipotle was born (Forbes, 2012).

It was amazing to learn that Chipotle has grown from a single restaurant to well over 1,000 restaurants in 17 years. All of this from a single vision of believing that good food should be affordable and tasty. Bobby Flay has really developed a true sense of what southwestern food is all about, and you can tell that he knows what it takes to create it from scratch. There were some very interesting key points of what investors look for in a business.

The first key element in a successful business plan is the name of the company. If a name does not match the company, then consumers will be confused about the business and probably will not be customers of that business for long.
I had not really thought about it before, but if a name is offensive then it will turn off certain demographics of potential customers.

Picking a proper name to represent the owner and the business is very important. The next key element that I found was important was the logo that a company chooses to represent itself. The name should be easy to read and without it being all jumbled up together. I have seen some places where I could not read the name of the business no matter how hard I had tried.

I agree that a logo should be simple and straight forward, and it should be easy to pronounce as well. The slogan that the company goes by should really hit home with what the business is all about too. The concept of the slogan is equally as important as the other key elements in a successful business plan.

The slogan needs to catch the consumer’s attention and be easy to remember too. Investors want to know where their money is going, and more importantly how much of a payback that they will receive in return. I can understand now how an ROI ( Return On Investment ) can be so important to an investor without a doubt. All of these elements are key in a business’s success, because being marketable is what truly captures a consumer’s attention.

Without a good marketing plan, the business is doomed from the outset. The company must have a strong team-oriented environment and possessing good leadership skills are critical. The owner of the business must show investors that he/she is willing to take risks and to bounce back from any failure. It is important for the owner to prove to himself or herself and to the investors that they are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed.

Sources:
http://www.bobbyflay.com/bobby-flay.php
http://people.forbes.com/profile/steve-ells/19160
http://www.chipotle.com/en-US/chipotle_story/steves_story/steves_story.aspx