Business plan for a frozen food wholesaler

[ABSTRACT ONLY; NO FULL TEXT] We often do not give a second thought to how a meal in a restaurant is made. This project gave our team an opportunity to examine that process. By taking a detailed look at the restaurant industry, we helped one distributor find ways to grow his business. We started by speaking with our client at length about how his business operates. He explained his daily activities and methods of conducting business with his customers. Our extensive literature research into the frozen food and restaurant industries helped us understand the larger picture so we could deliver ideas for growth and improvement for our client. We developed two survey questionnaires, one for existing customers and the other for potential customers. These data provided us with better insight into the customers' priorities and decision making. With that information, we made meaningful recommendations to our client that will have a significant impact on his business. Findings and recommendations in this report are proprietary to the client and shall remain confidential. Our team had a good mix of skillsets. One has several years of experience working in restaurants and each of us brought our unique knowledge and training to the project. As a Systems and Operations Management major, I brought data analysis skills in addition to my background in supply chain management with over ten years working in that field in two different organizations. These skills helped me analyze previous sales data and create a forecasting model that reduces ordering costs and enables the client to provide services to his customer base with increased productivity and lower costs. Interacting with a business owner in a real-world situation rather than reading about this in a book was a great learning experience. It brought together skills in data analysis, market research and data modeling that we acquired over the past three years of study, and gave us the opportunity to apply what we learned.