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Thursday, May 7, 2015

Reflective Essay: Suggestion for L'Apprenti brand

Assalamualaikum and hye!

so today, our lab is to suggest on what and how L'Apprenti brand can learn or follow to promote the product. we were asked to do it by group, by referring to http://www.intekmaresort.com.my/v2/ website.

below are report and the results of our discussion.

Suggestion to Promote Brand of L’Apprenti.
L’Apprenti is a brand created to position our Food Service Management Program and products in customers’ mind. It is brand under the Faculty of Food Science and Technology of University Putra Malaysia. L’apprenti brand consist of L’apprenti @ Putra Restaurant, L’apprenti CafĂ© @ Food 5, L’apprenti @ Golf, L’apprenti @ Deli and L’apprenti @ Meeting Package.
In our opinion, we think L’ Apprenti need to makes a lot of effort for promotion since they are not well known by students or staffs in UPM itself. Mainly, their customers are student FSTM faculty itself. Firstly, they should have their own website which it could help them in promoting online. Nowadays, people use technology a lot to search food. Besides, they also should use social media such as Facebook, Blogspot and Instagram. They have Facebook and blog account, but they did not update the page, so people might think that the brand is already been closed.
Next, we suggest L’ Apprenti to have promotion package. For instance, lunch, breakfast and tea set also birthday or event package. As a student, we tend to find affordable price yet worth with the food. Apart from that, they also may provide catering service. Since the location of central kitchen (Food Complex) is nearby to the Banquet Hall, which usually been used for big event, so it is easy for the organizer of event to manage their event.
The third suggestion for L’Apprenti is by doing food truck when invited by certain event, or they might also do tour around faculty selling their food. It is not necessary to have it every day, but maybe once a week or a fortnight. Then, they also might build an outlet at one of the residential college that is far away from food court. It makes students easier to find food.
     Apart from that, they really should focus on promotion by increasing the sales and marketing on the products. In order to market the restaurant, they need to distribute poster or flyer. If they did not have much time, they might need to appoint someone to manage their social media account. We have seen their blog, the last update is in 2011, which is four years ago! This would affect the brand because people would assume that L’Apprenti is no longer exist. Same goes to their Facebook account, they should update more frequent their Facebook since people waiting for update if there is new menu or any promotion.
    Besides, L’Apprenti shall join huge event to expose and introduce themselves. UPM always organize big event such as Convocation Expo, “Jom Masuk U” carnival, CEM exhibition etc. When those events organized, L’Apprenti shall open booth to sell their product, hence promoting their brand. They also could have a video shooting that shows the interior view, the kitchens, products and also the services that they offered. The video can be published in UPM official website, at faculty advertisement corner and else.
  

for this week, that's all from me. 
thanks for reading. :)

Friday, April 10, 2015

Reflective Essay: Microsoft Access

Assalamualaikum and hai.

so on this week of lab, we were taught to used Microsoft Access as database.

all of the information or record could be kept in database and made easier to find and access for the user of the database.
the key of the database that made it easier is usually by the ID number where it is different from each of the record. why not the name? even name of every single name could be same, hence by having ID number, it is the unique key where they would not be any repetition and similarity.
during saving the table, all description and category is being added to make ease of work.

after all the record been key-in, the database could be saved.


till then, thanks for reading!

Friday, April 3, 2015

Reflective Essay: Key Element of Effective Websites

Salam and hi.

Today we learnt things on the website, which is related to the key elements of an effective website.

For our practices, we are required to do a website critics and since our website for Google AdWords is on the upgrade, so we do critics for murnidiscovery.com for this practices.

 The aspects that required to be observed are the appearance, the content, functionality and also usability. For the appearance, we all agree that it is way too simple with minimum colour usage only
that are green, white and yellow and the main important to us that we think they should make the name/logo of their restaurant larger inside the website. next is for the content, we think that they had all their menu but lack of information in terms of their background and perhaps should add some important person of their company while for functionality, we like it that they have reservation online/ booked a table online by using their website. lastly is for the functionality, they might need to update more frequent or add some news to show their new menu, their current program or promotion and also may be activities done by staff etc.

So from what we had done, we realized that the key elements of an effective websites are:

  • appearance
  • content
  • functionality
  • website usability
  • search engine optimization



based on theory of Hanson and Kalyanam(2008) on a flow of a website, every website should start with :
1. Online presence which are email or website as info.

2. Interactive marketing- communicate a customers

3. Online transaction, such as e-commerce and penpal

4. Loyalty buliding features, such as necessity of log in. eg; social media


so i guess thats all from me. thank you for reading! :)

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Reflective Essay: Excel Part 2


This week is the continue from last week, where it shows that Excel as a database.

For this week, we learn in how to calculate food cost using this software whereby template can be prepared earlier, then we just need to fill the template.
Unintentionally, the recipe with the amount is prepared for one portion.

In this template, information such as the name, picture and else could be insert.
For the cost, people could just fill the formula for which cell that they want accordingly.



The outcome of the learning today is as below.


thank you.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Reflective Essay: Excel

Excel is part of data where can be used for database. 
So today we had learn briefly about how to use this software where we definitely learn how to group the data and turn it into chart where it made the data easier to be read.
This knowledge is definitely necessary for all of us especially for food service establishment. 

So these are the following task. 


Spreadsheets: Individual exercise

Sarah runs a travel agency called Gulf Coast Destinations. Customers can choose from four different travel locations. Sarah takes trip reservations by mail, phone, online, and by appointment in her office. Sarah tracks her annual sales to help her make business decisions.
1.     Make a spreadsheet that looks like the one below:

Gulf Coast Destinations Annual Sales 2011
Location
Mail
Phone
Online
Appointment
New Orleans, Louisiana
65
122
388
400
Pensacola, Florida
133
488
500
822
Key West, Florida
355
966
1599
1422
Corpus Christi, Texas
144
299
488
577

2.     Calculate the total annual sales Sarah made by mail, phone, online, and by appointment. 

3.     Format the data to have currency figures

4.     Save the spreadsheet on your flash drive or to the Desktop.  Name it Annual Sales 2011.

5.     Find total sales in every destination and make it as pie chart. Give title to the chart as Sales by location.

6.     Make a bar chart that looks comparing the amount of money Sarah made in each category of reservation. Give title as Sales by Category. Don’t use a legend since there is only one color representing this data.

7.     Change the number of decimal places of the currency in the chart to 0. This will make the Axis labels easier to read.

8.     Next, make a column chart of the amount of money Sarah made for each location in each reservation category. This shows her most popular locations, and the most popular way to make reservations.

9.   Change the title to Sales Comparison: Location and Category

10. Change Chart Styles group with a black background and save it.



The outcome of the task. 

Excel : Annual Sales 2014

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Reflective Essay: GOMC




GOMC is acronyms for Google Online Marketing Challenge.

GOMC is a medium that allow any website to be improve so that it can be display as top result when people search on search engine. It is one kind of way to promote the website, hence promoting the company. It is an online advertisement whereby people will be given real money to plan and conduct a campaign. It is actually a study method for student to allow them to learn and apply to the website. I understand that we will be given real money to be working on website that we choose to improve where it is real customer.


AdWords is a way to market those website in a fun way that is by using words. Interesting words that is suitable to the company is used and user will search with words and those website will appear anywhere they want, either on the top or on the site.

AdWords allow website to have extension to promote their campaign, For example, call ads extension, where they will include phone number and address where user could contact the company when they want. There are also extension where it allow the ads on engine appear on the site to the relevant keywords, where when user click, it will direct user to the company website.

To made this success, there are five things to be considered:
    1. structure your AdWords account
    2. choose the right keyword
    3. write attention-grabbing words
    4. select the right landing pages
    5. track who become your customer

In order to increase the number visitor to the website, social networks link may be added to the website as plug-in as people normally have their own social account. using that social account, company may share any coupon, promotion etc, and allowing easy access to customer.

However, to make this happen, budget also is necessary to be think so that the campaign produced is efficient until the campaign finish.