Story of an Entrepreneur


Zahra's Cafe began in 2009. Mr. Ghulam Abbas (founder of Zahra's Cafe) has done F.A from a private college. He first joined Pepsi Co. Food International as a sales person distribution. He took advantage of this multinational company and increased his contacts and escalated his network. He then joined another multinational company Nestle Foods. He was a person who had pretty useful knowledge about beverages and food items. He worked at Nestle Foods as an important sales person. After Nestle in race of excelling he climbed up another ladder towards Dawn Foods where he worked as senior sales person. Nonetheless this was not his dream; he then decided to leave Pakistan and found an amazing opportunity for working in a multinational bakery named Algezira Bakery which was located in Dubai. But unfortunately he could not work there for long time due to politics issues. He resigned from due to leg pulling and fraud issues. Algezira Company did not pay his cash balance and salary upon resignation. He went back to Pakistan empty handed. He tried to do job in Pakistan but he was underpaid despite of his skills. He then heard from one of his friends that there is 3 days event in City School, Johar Town. There would be food stalls in that event. The thing you have to do is to rent a stall from Rs. 4,000. Again money was a big constraint for him at that time. He decided to be a risk taker rather than a risk adverse person. With projecting idea of food stall he borrowed money from his friend and rented out a stall over there. City School was located in Johar Town. He earned more than Rs. 80,000 in just 3 days by providing the students of City School with the variety of food items. After managing the stall in valuable manner he asked the management of City School to let him open a café in the school that will provide students with all variety of beverages, food items, juices, fast food products, soft drink and many more stuff which management allowed him decisively.
Now they have 2 fully functioned outlets with 30,000 daily sales. The cafe business started of just 8-9 months ago.
Questions which we asked from Mr. Ghulam Abbas
Q1: What is the need you are trying to satisfy?
Ans: We are trying to fulfill the needs of students relating every food item. There are many cafes in schools and colleges. Every school has a cafe but the thing that matters me a lot is the quality of food. He said, “Health is wealth.” He added more by saying that parents always advise their children that do not eat from outside especially at school level. They made lunch for them but most of the students do not like and eat the lunch they usually bring with them. Our efforts is to prepare tidy, healthy and pure food and beverages for them which include shwarma, smosas, fries, pizza, burgers, sandwiches, fresh juices and other things like that. He said that after fulfilling the quality issues the next big challenge for us is the variety which really differentiates us from other cafes. We try our best to provide students with the variety of food products. We actually want to provide students a platform from where they can have every type of food products. We use our contacts in food companies in which I personally worked for sometime so that our customers can get variety of products at single place.
Q2: What is your potential market size?
Ans: He said that he does not know the exact size but City School has 40 branches all over Pakistan and we could also expand our business to other schools, colleges and universities. So if we see we have really a larger potential market that can be approached.
Q3: What is your marketing/sales channel?
Ans: We usually do branding of our products that includes renovation and advertising. We asked our suppliers to provide or renovate with new infrastructure. Word of mouth is really helpful for our cafes that really projects our sales to sky touching. He further elaborated that our students in business context our customers are now our representatives. By word of mouth our cafe is getting known to other schools as well by our representatives (students). Food business has always risk involved in it if your marketing campaign is up to satisfactory level for your customers then they will market and advertise your products. He again emphasize that our success was mainly due to “word of mouth” marketing and this is our marketing and sales channel.
Q4: What is your business model?
Ans: He said that our business model totally depends upon quality and differentiation. He said that every school has a cafe and why anyone hires at his place. He said, “There is always an empty chair for a hard worker” so keeping this thing in view we first build a strong supply chain management system. We used our contacts effectively, differentiated our cafe by providing variety, tidy, healthy and pure food, these things are in our business model. We value our customer and our goal is to turn customer satisfaction into customer delight. He said that there are 4-5 things that are present in business model.
• First component of a business model is the value proposition of what is offered to the market. Value proposition means the value from the customer’s point of view that addresses the problem. In our case it is the variety of food products.
• Second thing in business model is the segment(s) of clients that are addressed by the value proposition. In our case students of schools, colleges and universities.
• The relationship established with the clients is an essential part of a business model and in our case is word of mouth.
• Our value network and our position in value network is also very important component in the business model. Value network involves suppliers, distributer, marketing intermediaries and other companies that create value for final customers. In value network contacts are always very important so my previous experiences was with the food companies and I personally have contacts with them so we always tried our best that we can make contact use in the best possible way. Similarly what your position is in value network that is always an edge over your competitor.
• Last but not the least is the competitive strategy that includes how you cope with your competitors.
Q5: What are your major show stoppers?
Ans: We have infinite numbers of competitors. Our competitors are the cafes present in schools, colleges and universities.
Q6: What do you want to accomplish in the future? In other words what is your goal?
Ans: Our goal is to open a cafe in every big schools, colleges and universities that provides students with healthy, tidy and pure food that’s all.
Group Members ; Hafiz Qamar Abbas- Ayesha Kanwal- Omer Tahir