Project Description
The Steinhardt Natural History Museum is currently being built and will open its gates to the public in 2017.
The Museum spreads over 27,000 Sq.Ft will include public visiting areas, classes, an auditorium, and research labs. The museum, surrounded by the botanical and zoological gardens, is set to offer a wide range of activities aimed at a diverse target market. Consequently, there is a need to provide dining services to the public as well as offering retail services as accustomed in other museums.
Accordingly, DS Consulting was entrusted with the task of preparing a business model relating to the most suitable dining activity for the museum. Furthermore, DS Consulting was also required to conduct a market research regarding the suitability and content of the retail activity which is to take place at the museum.
The goals and the objectives of the consulting project were:
- Determining the relevant dining model -canteen? self -serving cafeteria? Restaurant?
- Evaluating the probability of the business potential of the dining activity.
- Estimating the potential revenues and costs of the dining activity and not a ballpark figure.
- Define the size and the relevant line of products for the planned retail activity.
The consulting project was done despite the lack of a strategic blue print regarding topics such as: opening days of the museum, usage of admission fee, who is the target market, what is the marketing strategy (positioning, branding, PR), which were yet to be resolved.
Thus, there was a need to gather data from other museums in Israel which bear certain similarities in content which could serve as a benchmark in gathering the required information. In parallel, as the museum is located within the vicinity of northern Tel-Aviv and its surrounding neighborhoods with direct proximity to the museum, an analysis was conducted regarding the nature of the dining scene in this vicinity (supply side), the size of the population, its purchasing power and the available dining and leisure activity offered to families in the region. The analysis of this data enabled DS Consulting to to define the main segments of the target market that the museum will turn to as well as a projection of the annual number of visitors of each segment.
Consequently, DS Consulting designed an economic model aimed to assess the business potential of several dining options. For each model a P&L ledger was prepared regarding the potential annual revenues (including the one -time investments . Operational factors such as: the geographical location of the building, the designated place of the dining area and its size were also taken into consideration.
Based upon the gathered data its analysis, DS Consulting was able to provide concrete conclusions and recommendations regarding the suitability as well as the feasibility of the relevant dining activity at the museum.
In parallel and DS Consulting was also entrusted with the task of conducting a market research regarding the suitable lines of products for the retail activity which is to take place at the museum. In this research, a benchmark comparison was conducted with other natural history museums in the world such as the Naturhistoriska in Sweden, The Oxford Natural History museum and Museo di Storia Naturale part of the Florence University which bore certain similarities in terms of content, size and university ownership. DS Consulting also conducted a research regarding the retail activities in other Israeli museums.
Upon completing this research DS Consulting submitted its conclusions regarding the recommended size of the retail activity of the museum as well as the relevant line of products.
