Community based food: developing a business plan for food bazaar

Abstract

The project has been offered by the esteemed Future group, for its subsidiary Food Bazaar. We have executed the project under the guidance of Professor Ashis Mishra. The project co-coordinators from Future Group are Ms. Poorva Mohril and Mr. Sankaranarayanan. With this project, we are supposed to identify the food preferences of Kannadiga community and develop a business plan that can be executed at select Food Bazaar stores. The business plan will later be extended to other stores in Bangalore. Business plan in this context is primarily about developing a list of vendors. The project covers understanding the consumption pattern of community based food products of Food Bazaar customers and developing a business plan that can be executed at Food Bazaar stores. Level of processing preferred by the customers will also be considered for our recommendations. Food Bazaar team has identified the following stores at Bangalore for implementation of the project: Banashankari, Shantinagar and Old Madras Road. However, as the Kannadiga population was lesser in Old Madras Road, the Food Bazaar team has given us access to the Rajajinagar Food Bazaar later on. Our approach involved the following: (a) Personal depth Interviews with Food Bazaar customers to understand their consumer behavior, preference for regional food and inputs for Kannadiga community food and processing of food. (b) Surveys of customers at Food Bazaar locations to understand the profile of a Food Bazaar consumer. (c) Personal depth interviews with Kannadigas to gather the list of food items preferred by Kannadigas. (d) Focus group discussions with a group of Kannadigas to understand their consumption patterns, preferences and Kannadiga foods consumed. (e) An Online survey to gather further insights it into profiles of customers visiting Food Bazaar and other retailers and gather insights into what they are unsatisfied about. (f) Visits to local markets to gather insights into Kannadiga food sold by them. (g) Secondary research to get more understanding of Kannadiga food preferences. (h) Analysis of all the data gathered, and arrived at the final deliverables. Deliverables include: (a) Recommendations and suggestions for Food Bazaar about level of processing and other insights that we obtained during our interviews with Food Bazaar customers. Please see the section Conclusion and Recommendations (Link). (b) List of assortments of food categories consumed by the Kannadiga community. (c) Shortlisted list of vendors that Food Bazaar can use to buy Kannadiga food.