We want to run a cabaret. This business will be a place where people will have dinner during which they will be provided with entertainment. To be clear, it will be a place where people will spend a good time with their friends or loved-ones. The specialty of this place will also be the provision of a French surrounding: food, drinks, ambience and so on. One of the main advantages is that people won’t have to go from one place to another place ( restaurant and then theatre) to spend a pleasant evening.

Our cabaret will have different activities. During the day, this place will be a cafe bar. Some afternoons in the week we want to provide performances for children (e.g. plays, songs). During weekday evenings, we want to provide small concerts. People won’t have to pay to come into the cabaret, they will only pay for what they order (drink and food). During the weekend, we will provide some other performances (e.g. one man shows, theatre plays, concerts). One evening in the month, we will organize some parties with a theme: e.g. oriental, Mediterranean, nouveau-Beaujolais. This way we will attract a different clientele.

To do this, the premises will be really important. We want to emphasize the comfort of the furniture, the efficiency of lights and the sound, good ventilation of the room. We will also provide French food, usually sandwiches (made of baguette), different kind of salads, beef steak and French fries, also crepes (a famous kind of pancakes), beverages will include wine, some spirits, beer, soft drinks and mineral water. We would like our famous kir to become a trademark aperitif.

Our business name is “Le Petit Olympia”. We chose this name fro various reasons. It is obviously French. The Olympia in France is well known because it is a mythical place of performance. “Petit” means small. So our business will aim to be a kind of subsidiary of the Olympia in Paris, utilizing the fame of this place. The legal structure we have chosen is a partnership. At the beginning, we think it will be much easier than a limited company. We won’t have to fill in too many papers. But we have agreed on how to run and manage the business and drawn up a contract, which contains our objectives. In a few years we could consider a limited company structure to allow us to have shareholders, and have some protection.

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Our business is in the field of leisure and entertainment. This market is flourishing. In the UK, consumer spending on leisure was in 27% in1995, 27.5% in 1999 and is expected to be 28.0% in 2004. Proportion of expenditure is different according to social class. (cf, Market Assessment International 2000, p23). Our business is based on both catering and live entertainment. In terms of eating out, we have seen that people in Scotland prefer going to a restaurant rather than a public house or participating in sport., if they want to have a good night’s entertainment In terms of entertainment we can talk about theatre.

On average, according to research theatre is quite interesting, but cinema is more appealing. Among adults, 54% prefer cinema and 44% prefer theatre. But three categories of people prefer going to the theatre rather than cinema: people between 45-50 years, between 55-64 years and over 65years. (UK Leisure and Recreation, 2000, 30). In Scotland, the figures are, 45% of the people prefer theatre, and 55% cinema (UK Leisure and Recreation, 2000, p 31).

In terms of eating out, people in the UK prefer to go to a restaurant in the evening rather than during the day. This needs re-wording 8.3% go to a restaurant in the evening 2 or 3 times a month, 19% go once a week and 0.8% do that more than once a week (UK Leisure and Recreation, p148). The forecast for the UK eating and drinking market is m 17.387 in 2002, 18.250 in 2003 and m18.500 in 2004. Therefore we can expect a growth in our business? (UK Leisure and Recreation, p152).

In terms of performances, concerts are also an interesting market. Some types of music are more appealing. In first place is pop/rock, then classical music and jazz. The forecast for the theatre market is increasing from 420 in 2000 tom 500 in 2004. (UK Leisure and Recreation, p 177).

As we have two activities, restaurant and entertainment, it would be really profitable if we could gather customers on both the restaurant and live entertainment markets. But we know that it is not so easy. We have to consider the whole market for restaurants and live entertainment, and think that only certain people would be ready for this. Some people really like to do things differently. This is why we needed field research, to know if people who like going to the theatre would be interested in having dinner.

Field research This kind of business needs field research. Even if Edinburgh is a very cultural place where theatre, plays and concerts are plentiful, we have to be sure that some people would be ready to go to such a place. That is why we created a questionnaire (cf Appendix 1). The questionnaire is divided into four parts: -Part one: did the customer dine? (And where?) -Part two: the customer, the performance and the price -Part three: our idea and the price the customer would be ready to pay.

-Part four: the customer profile. We conducted the survey in three different places. The Royal Lyceum Theatre, the Traverse Theatre and the Queen’s Hall. We asked people these questions when they were going out of 3 different kind of performance: -Performance for young public: “Beauty and the beast” by Stuart Paterson, Royal Lyceum, -One-woman show : Olga by Linda McLean, Traverse Theatre, -Jazz concert music hall : Mr. Mcfall’s chamber, Queen’s Hall.

These performances are the kind of entertainment we want to provide. You can find the result in Appendix 2. We also had interviews with the managers of these places. Indeed we had to have their agreement on what we were doing. They welcomed us and we talked about our business plan. They thought it was a good idea and some gave us advice.