Business Plan: The Coffee Project

Executive Summary The Coffee Project will be a specialty coffee shop in downtown Bartlesville, OK offering direct-trade coffee, tea, simple meals, and TCP merchandise. The shop will offer the standard specialty coffee drinks like cappuccinos, lattes, macchiatos and cortados, as well as shots of flavors and a selection of milk alternatives. In achieving its mission to provide great specialty coffee with a cause to Bartlesville, a portion of the profits from every food or drink purchase at The Coffee Project will be donated to local and regional charity organizations of the customers’ choosing. All net profits from TCP merchandise will also be donated to charity. Our goal is to bring change to the area while spurring people to get involved in helping others. The Coffee Project will be located in the heartbeat of Bartlesville, its Retail and Restaurant District. The 20 shops downtown work together to draw in crowds from the surrounding areas and create a unique shopping and dining experience. Of the 20,000 coffee shops in the United States, 55% are specialty coffee shops, which are gearing towards the hip, modern interiors that the millennial population especially craves. With plenty of seating and a modern, industrial-style interior in its 966 square-foot retail space, The Coffee Project will appeal to the audience of caffeine-lovers who enjoy the social aspect of grabbing coffee in a unique atmosphere. The target market for The Coffee Project will be the 4,500 working professionals downtown and the 1,000 college students at the two local universities. Employment has increased in Bartlesville for the highly specialized energy sector some 3.5% in the last four years. The downtown area is home to several of the city’s largest employers, including Phillips 66, ConocoPhillips, and Schlumberger. Enrollment for Rogers State University downtown has experienced double-digit enrollment increases during several recent semesters. The millennial population ages 18-36 comprises a large portion of The Coffee Project’s target market. Millennials are more active on social media and are more likely than their elders to seek out a modern coffee shop to spend time in after school or during work breaks. The Coffee Project will hire a social media manager to promote the business via Instagram and Facebook, in order to reach a large segment of our target market. Promotions on social media will focus on the quality products offered in The Coffee Project, as well as on its mission to giving back to the community. An understanding of The Coffee Project’s mission will enhance the attractiveness of the business and allow it to appeal to a wider audience. The Coffee Project will source its coffee from roasters that use a direct-trade model and provide ethically-sourced coffees. This model ensures appropriate compensation to the farmers at origin. The Coffee Project’s pricing will be comparable to its main competitor, Jude’s Health and Java House, while maintaining a 75% gross margin. Our competitive advantage will be our ability to donate to charity organizations, as well as our high-quality roaster lineup. The Coffee Project will fund its startup business with a capital investment totaling $50,000. This initial investment will cover all startup costs and equipment, as well as cover any cash flow deficits during its startup phase. Revenue is expected to reach$195,000 in year one, with an annual projected growth rate of 7.5%. Net profits are expected to reach $55,000 in the first year and grow 7.5$73,000 in the fifth year. Our goal is to work up to donating a maximum of 50% of net profits to charity, starting with 10% in the first year. Charity donations will grow from $5,500 in year one to nearly$40,000 in year five

EXAMINING THE INFLUENCE OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND PRE-SERVICE TRAINING ON THE USE OF SELF-REGULATION PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES OF MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHERS

Academic self-regulated learning (SRL) skills closely align with the 21st century skills that lead to student success. Research demonstrates that academic achievement is closely related to the use of SRL in the classroom and that teacher practices are fundamental in imparting these skills to their students. It is not clear, however, how teachers are acquiring these skills and/or how their knowledge of metacognition and SRL are generalized into their pedagogical practices. This quantitative study examined the relationship between use of SRL pedagogical practices and teacher exposure to pre-service training and professional development, as well as their years of teaching, subject matter, and race/ethnicity. Middle school (7th and 8th grade) participants were asked to complete a survey about their use of SRL pedagogical practices, which made available on Facebook professional networking sites. Independent t-tests, ANOVAs, and multiple regressions were used to analyze the resulting data. Training, both via pre-service and professional development experiences, was found to be strong predictor of use of SRL practices. The results of this study can guide decisions on the delivery of professional training initiatives that develop best instructional practices with the ultimate goal of improving student achievement

Having a father incarcerated can increase an adolescent’s destructive and violent criminal behavior.

Despite the slowdown in incarceration rates that has occurred in recent years, more than one child in every 50 has a parent in prison in the U.S. today. In new research that samples more than 12,000 children and young adults, Lauren C. Porter and Ryan D. King find that children whose father was incarcerated were likely to have a level of violent or destructive crime 23 percent greater than their peers

Understanding the Structural Scaling Relations of Early-Type Galaxies

We use a large suite of hydrodynamical simulations of binary galaxy mergers to construct and calibrate a physical prescription for computing the effective radii and velocity dispersions of spheroids. We implement this prescription within a semi-analytic model embedded in merger trees extracted from the Bolshoi Lambda-CDM N-body simulation, accounting for spheroid growth via major and minor mergers as well as disk instabilities. We find that without disk instabilities, our model does not predict sufficient numbers of intermediate mass early-type galaxies in the local universe. Spheroids also form earlier in models with spheroid growth via disk instabilities. Our model correctly predicts the normalization, slope, and scatter of the low-redshift size-mass and Fundamental Plane relations for early type galaxies. It predicts a degree of curvature in the Faber-Jackson relation that is not seen in local observations, but this could be alleviated if higher mass spheroids have more bottom-heavy initial mass functions. The model also correctly predicts the observed strong evolution of the size-mass relation for spheroids out to higher redshifts, as well as the slower evolution in the normalization of the Faber-Jackson relation. We emphasize that these are genuine predictions of the model since it was tuned to match hydrodynamical simulations and not these observations.Comment: Submitted to MNRA

Would Consumers Purchase a Wider Variety of Produce and Products at West Virginia Farmers\u27 Markets if They Were Available?

This article examines whether or non-consumers would purchase different produce and products if they were available at farmers\u27 markets in West Virginia? A statewide, multi-year research project has generated data to answer this question. Surveys were administered to indicate what consumers are purchasing at West Virginia farmers\u27 markets and what they would like to purchase. Additional information was gathered to show public perceptions of the markets, consumer shopping habits, and reasons for not shopping at the market. Results show that there is consumer demand for a wider variety of produce at West Virginia farmers\u27 markets

Perceptions and concerns of healthy eating in low-income African American mothers of preschoolers

Health disparities are prevalent in the U.S, with low-income African American children suffering from higher rates of obesity and chronic diseases compared to White children. Currently, little is known about parental perceptions of healthy eating, and concerns related to child health and weight in this at-risk population. The main purpose of this study was to examine perceptions, motivating factors and barriers to healthier eating in a sample of low-income African American parents of 3-5 year old children. The second purpose was to assess parental concerns about health and/or weight and to examine the accuracy of parental perceptions of child weight status. Participants were recruited from Head Start Programs in North Carolina. The Social Cognitive Theory constructs guided focus groups and a survey administered to the participants. Content analysis of 8 focus groups generated the following themes: 1) lack of nutrition knowledge and misconceptions; 2) healthy meals are home-cooked, include meat and starch; 3) family members, lack of maternal modeling, and child pickiness are main barriers to healthier eating; 4) strong awareness of family history of chronic disease, including obesity; 5) lack of concern about child's current weight. Over 25% of mothers underestimated their child's weight status. Our findings highlight important maternal perspectives influencing children's diet quality and long-term health outcomes among low-income at-risk preschoolers. Nutrition educators should be aware that low-income African American mothers may be aware of chronic disease risks, but do not perceive food choices in early childhood as having strong impact on the child's future health