Qualitaly_121

FEB. MAR. 2021 IX chance to read a 60-page business plan (believe me, I have seen it!), unless of course it is a huge and incredibly articulated project. Private investors often make decisions after reading about ten pages, which, of course, must be well written and extremely convincing. In my experience, about twenty pages for banks is more than enough, or even less in the case of smaller projects. 5. IS ONE BUSINESS PLAN GOOD FOR ALL? Again, the answer is “absolutely not”. Certainly, some parts can simply be expanded/revised or adapted, but each user needs a business plan that goes into detail on the aspects related to his or her role. The entrepreneur will, for example, need the figures to be particularly detailed and divisible on a monthly or quarterly basis for monitoring purposes. The banks will be looking for the information that is normally required to prepare a loan application and, therefore, it will be appropriate to comment adequately on some aspects of particular interest to them, such as balance sheet ratios, balances and cash flow for the repayment of financial debts. The skill of a business plan writer is not to be found, therefore, in the “quantity” of pages produced, but in their effectiveness, i.e., in the ability to help the company achieve its goal. Photo: Marco Massari ______________________________ BOX Current accounts at risk of default Since 1 January, overdrawn current accounts have been blocked in banks. In fact, the flexibility in the hands of branch managers, who will no longer be able to manage small liquidity problems for both families and companies, has also disappeared. All because of the rules of the European Banking Authority. And a stop to compensating for lines of credit and the duration of default doubled, for customers, from three to six months. All this with enormous damage especially for small and medium- sized enterprises, for which the “soft” management of relations with banks is often essential. According to the Centro Studi di Unimpresa, until last 31 December, a debtor was considered to be in a state of default if he was more than 90 days in arrears with payments amounting to 5% of his debt. Now the percentage drops significantly to 1%, according to which the meaning of “relevance” of the arrears payment changes, in relation to which two other thresholds also come into play: €100 for households and €500 for businesses. And that’s not all: in addition to lowering the thresholds, the new European rules do not allow credit institutions any room for manoeuvre, whereas the “old” rules allowed banks to grant customers the possibility of offsetting lines of credit. ______________________________ AT PAGE 26 ON THE TABLE The consumer has changed (and with him the consumption) How to re-establish a relationship with the customer after he has entered a creative and experimental phase in his own home? With a versatile and targeted offer. By inspiring and becoming true beacons for people who day after day deepen their culinary knowledge. And the diner moves on to phase 2.0 by Riccardo Sada Since the outbreak of the pandemic, Italians have prepared more meals at home. They have broadened their gastronomic horizons in relation to new tastes and flavours. They have gravitated towards recipes, ingredients and dishes with curiosity, indulgence and resilience. The impossibility of frequenting restaurants, pizzerias and, in general, places of refreshment, led the client to create a natural home comfort zone. The time available has allowed him to explore and discover methods, ideas and techniques that have made him mature in terms of knowledge. The old consumer has become a new consumer and not only in our country, where we have a centuries- old tradition and passion handed down from generation to generation, from mothers and grandmothers, but also in the rest of the world. The lapse of time, the possibility of investigating, evaluating, choosing autonomously what to do, what to buy and consequently what to cook, has created a new individual, with whom today the restaurant world must relate in a clear, honest, sincere, prepared and, as has been said many times, also empathetic way. So let us try to understand how this new consumer, this 2.0 diner, will influence the market. WHAT’S ON THE PLATE More and more restaurant orders are being placed for dishes that guests are unlikely to be able to (or have been able to) prepare at home: barbecued meat (not everyone has a terrace or garden), roast duck (a difficult ingredient to deal with) and paella (an endless process) are among the most popular dishes in big cities such as Paris, London or New York. Not forgetting the delicacies. Knowing how to cook a steak from meat that has been matured for months or Kobe beef from the Wagyu breed, which costs between 100 and 1000 euros per kilo, is not for everyone. There are dishes that we always go to restaurants for and are unlikely to try again at home. In short, what we will find in our restaurants will be a new customer, who will eat out less, but will certainly order ‘challenging’ dishes of the highest quality. The Americans who, stranded by the pandemic, cooked for the first time in their own homes know something about this. It is well known that, especially in New York, before the Coronavirus no one (or hardly anyone) cooked at home. Sometimes there was not even a kitchen in the house, only a microwave oven to heat up the food that was inevitably ordered in. Nowadays, however, Americans are more into cooking talent shows than Netflix. And they are enjoying it. A lot. The lockdown has brought them closer to the cooker and they have been making gourmet sauces, trying out new recipes and cleaning out the spice racks. That’s because in the United States, the hot sauce craze has broken out. Mexico also plays a major role in the authenticity of the products. Many Millennials and Gen X have also started cooking at home for the first time and enjoyed it. So what will they want from restaurants in the future? They probably won’t eat fast food anymore, but they will want something more refined, maybe a gourmet burger. In Dubai they are solving this problem by sending the chef directly to your home: the idea comes from Ashok Kalyanpur of ITC Welcomgroup, which provides a precise and polished service in the cities of the United Arab Emirates. REVIEWING PLANS AND OFFERS Rene Lammers, head of PepsiCo’s development department, imagines that “While it is assumed that in the short term people will not return to working in the office as they did before, we have to prepare for the fact that during the week there will be few opportunities to eat out”. So, in order to return to pre-Covid numbers (or almost), the restaurant must be