The five environments within which the company operates, and which effect the e-business solution, includes a Competitive, Economic, Technological, Legal/Political, and Sociocultural environments.

COMPETITIVE:

Although Cultures is known for its “fresh food ideas”, there are those competitors who also establish similar menus, with calorie-conscious products. For instance, the business is one of the first restaurants to foresee the frozen yogurt craze with its famous “smoothie”, a drink made of frozen yogurt, skim milk and a choice array of fresh fruits. Likewise, “Fit for Life” restaurant also offers the similar “smoothie” idea, as well; they have sandwiches with soup and salad combos. Along with Fit for Life, Cultures faces competition against some other known places including, Fresh, The Great Canadian Bagel and Wendy’s.

Because 505 University is situated in the downtown core area with business people accumulating the place, Mr. Jao is challenged with various types of restaurants and fast food chains during the lunch hour. One of these places that he feels more challenged against is Druxy’s Famous Deli Sandwiches, which is a couple of blocks from his restaurant.

Upon examining the competitor’s website, they target their consumers around the lunch hour and provides a catering service comparable to Cultures. Druxy’s offers a catering order form with visuals to emphasize their products and take-out specials. Analyzing the site further will bring you to specifics in terms of ordering, while other pages provides links on tips on how they prepare their products.

After carefully analyzing Mr. Jao’s most concerned rival web site, as e-commerce students we will take the opportunity to not only match Druxy’s e-business, but take advantage of their site by implementing ways to exceed customer standards. One of the things that they did not propose on their venue is a downloadable menu. This criterion will be an advantage for Mr. Jao’s restaurant since he will have this feature available to his clients. Unlike Druxy’s, Cultures will have this option provided to his online consumers for flexibility of having their menu at hand, and at the same time gain information without having to check back online.



ECONOMIC:

After experiencing a remarkably downfall in our current economy, Cultures Restaurants still remains profitable in the business. Mr. Jao indicates that his business, despite the current events, has kept its grounds in terms of business sales.

Because the economy applies to how well the business is doing and affect economic factors, Mr. Jao has taken all these issues at hand, and has carefully taken each factors into serious consideration. He has informed us that since the tragic incident that occurred on September 11th, the employment rate fell sharply, and that most job losses in October has spread across most business groups, with especially large declines in services and manufacturing.

According to our own findings, total employment dropped by 619,000 in October to 134.6 million, seasonally adjusted, and the employment-population ratio fell by 0.4 percentage point to 3.3 percent. Since January, employment has fallen by about 1.4 million, and the employment ratio has declined by 1.2 percentage points.

The cost of living in Canada is not high in comparison with other industrialized nations, socialist or not. Part of the reason that Canada keeps on appearing at the top of United Nations lists of the highest living standards in the world is a result of its low costs and accessible social support system for Canadians. As an entrepreneur, Mr. Jao has studied these facts and uses them to assess the different types of clients that he encounters with on a day-to-day basis. In terms of the wages factor, Mr. Jao has suggested that we visit sites referring to “Minimum Wages Rates Across Canada” to determine further details on how this economic factor is doing in the country. One that he referred us to indicates the wage rates across Canada where you can find the information in depth and be able to see what the standards are in different cities.



TECHNOLOGICAL:

As mentioned on our previous reports, Cultures Restaurants (particularly located on 505 University Avenue), has not had any advertising or marketing tactics through the World Wide Web. Thus, we will take this opportunity of working with the owner to enhance their service to a broader market.

Referring back to the first section of the business environment, Mr. Jao’s main competition, Druxy’s Famous Deli Sandwiches, has provided photo images of their products and catering menus. In turn, we will implement this idea to meet the competitive pressure.

The Cultures homepage was made to appear “fresh” and “contemporary” as we have initially stated in the early stages of the project. We used “attention grabbing” colors, specifically green and yellow to coincide with the Cultures logo. We envisioned the website to be appealing and “eye catchy “ to grab online attention, thus we have incorporated a Macromedia Flash Movie since most of the restaurants’ competition did not have one. The layout will help contribute with customer decisions when the time comes for them to choose a company to place catering and/or lunch orders.

We feel that the best content material for the site would mostly be filled with text and images. This will enable Cultures’ clients to get an idea on what they are going to purchase (through the images), and be informed of the product prices, size, etc., by text descriptions. Most of our images will be scanned, and most importantly it will be the restaurants’ “main features”, and “special combo” items.



SOCIOCULTURAL:

Since Mr. Jao’s restaurant is located in a downtown region where he encounters business clients from such places including the U.S Embassy, University Avenue Court House, or even workers at major hospitals such as; Mt. Sinai and The Sick Kids Hospital, he would like to have a user friendly site where each individual can feel “free” to navigate.

Mr. Jao takes pleasure in meeting different types of clients, whether students, or business people, he enjoys interacting with his customers. He has no specifics in terms of having a target market since he has made it clear that his service is open to everyone in all backgrounds. In the event that he decides to have a “live” solution after this development, he will consider the option of having different languages provided on to the site.



LEGAL/POLITICAL:

All images, text and graphics, contained on the project are "Cultures Restaurants" and the logos are trademarks of Cultures Restaurants Inc. Each variation of color schemes was taken from the franchise’s identity and was incorporated with site’s production. Mr. Jao is aware that there might be some implications with the franchise since he is only advertising his restaurant as a single chain rather than as a whole, thus this might create a corporate competition. As web designers, we wanted to stay true with the representation that Cultures Restaurants has already established as a franchise, and have designed the website based on the existing image of the franchise alone. Statements on the website are deemed to be true and accurate at the time of posting. However, Cultures Restaurants at 505 University Avenue will not be held responsible or liable for any errors or omissions in the information contained on the project.