Today, you will be starting to work through a simulation in which you choose 5 restaurants out of 12 candidates, to be part of a new high school food court. You will have to look at data about costs and preferences. You will also have to listen to the views of numerous stakeholders.
Begin by reading the Principal’s letter, This gives you and introduction to the problem. After reading the letter, open your Food Court Journal and list 5 things that you need to consider when trying to choose the 5 best options. Next, list 3 things you know right now in the table, and 5 things you need to know in order to start choosing the top 5 restaurants for the food court.
Once you’re done listing 5 things you need to know, read about all 12 Restaurant Bidders. Hopefully reading about the restaurants will answer some of the questions you have. Once you think you have a good understanding of the restaurant choices, complete the following statements on your Food Court Journal.
Financials Spreadsheet
Demand Table – Data about how popular each restaurant is. The demand table shows how many items will be purchased at a given price. At $0.50 per item, we see how popular a restaurants food will be. The Roastery would sell 500 items if they cost $.50. Other restaurants sell only a few items at $.50. There is very low demand for these items.
Cost Table – Data about how much it costs to make an item for each restaurant. There are fixed costs, which do not change, and are the same for everyone. These have to be paid no matter what. In contrast, there are variable costs which can change from week to week depending on many different variation in business such as number of customers, reliability of workers, costs of supplies, etc.
Revenue Table – Revenue is the amount of money a business brings in. This is different from profit. The total revenue worksheet shows how much money each restaurant makes when it sells items at a certain price.
Profit Table – All of these calculations and data entry are done to see how much profit a particular restaurant can generate. The student council wants higher profit restaurants operating in our food court. The restaurants profits directly effects the student council activities budget. More profit equals more money to use to offer more activities. Color the cell with the highest profit for each restaurant yellow.
Tab order should be:
Demand
Cost
Revenue
Total Cost
Profit
Calculate the cost to make an item and use the stall
On Cost, cell C8
=SUM(C6:C7)
cell C13
=SUM(C11:C12)
Calculate the revenue each item will bring in based on the items demand at each price
On Revenue, cell B5
=PRODUCT(Demand!$A5,Demand!B5)
Calculate the total cost to produce all the items demanded at each price
On Total Cost, cell B5
=PRODUCT(Demand!B5,.4)+30
copy the formula across row 5 by clicking the green square in the bottom of the cell and dragging it down the row. This gives you the basic formula to calculate total costs, but you need to change the .4 in each of the copied instances. This is because it costs $0.40 to produce a taco, but the rest of the restaurant’s items have different costs. Use the numbers below to correct the formulas in row 5. The pink number is the cost for each restaurant converted to a decimal. This will need to be changed for each column.
C5 – .8
D5 – .7
E5 – .13
F5 – 3.4
G5 – 2.5
H5 – 1.15
I5 – 1.2
J5 – .4
K5 – .3
L5 – .95
M5 – 2.55
Subtract the total cost from the revenue to find the profit. This is the most important bit of data in the Food Court workbook.
On Profit, cell B24
=’Revenue’!B24-‘Total Cost’!B24
Prelude to figuring profit:
The demand for something from Fleur de Lys at the $5 price point is 11. That means that Fluer de Lys can expect to sell 11 menu items if they charge $5 per item.
Look at cell G8 on your cost sheet to see how much Fleur de Lys has to pay to make an item.
Next, calculate how much profit they’d make per item, and how much total profit at the $5 price point.
Although profit is important, there are other things to consider while choosing our food court restaurants such as:
- Nutritional Value
- Variety of Options
- Taste
- Price
- Quality
- Chain v. Local
- Community Involvement/Local Consciousness
Additionally, stakeholders (people who have an interest in picking certain restaurants) may also have something you need to consider when making your final choices. Here are some voice mail transcripts from people who want to influence your decisions.
You will present your decisions to the school board. Be sure to consider each members perspective as described in this memo from the school board secretary.
Finally, you will put together a presentation describing your final choices. You presentation should include:
- A title slide with “High School Food Court” and your name(s) – 5 points
- A slide describing the issue and what you had to consider in making your final restaurant choices – 15
- A slide for each restaurant you picked that includes – 10 points each
- the name of the restaurant
- a description of whose needs are met by the restaurant and how
- A “Close Calls” slide that describes 2 restaurants were close to making it and why you ultimately did not choose them. – 10 points
