The Vintage Restaurant is on Captiva Island, a resort community near Fort Myers, FL. The restaurant, which is owned and operated by Karen Payne, has just completed its third year of operation. During that time, Karen has sought to establish a reputation for the restaurant as a high-quality dining establishment that specializes in fresh seafood. The efforts by Karen and her staff have proven successful, and her restaurant has become one of the best and fastest-growing restaurants on the island. Karen has concluded that to plan for the growth of the restaurant in the future, she needs to develop a system that will enable her to forecast food and beverage sales by month for up to one year in advance. Karen has the following data on total food and beverage sales for the three years of operation. [See below for data.]
Perform an analysis of the sales data for the Vintage Restaurant. Prepare a report for Karen that summarizes your findings, forecasts, and recommendations. Include:
a. A graph of the time series.
b. An analysis of the seasonality of the data. Indicate the seasonal indexes for each month, and comment on the high and low seasonal sales months. Do the seasonal indexes make intuitive sense? Discuss.
c. A forecast of sales for January through December of the fourth year.
d. Recommendations as to when the system that you have developed should be updated to account for new sales data.
e. Any detailed calculations of your analysis in the appendix of your report.
f. Assume that January sales for the fourth year turn out to be $295,000. What was your forecast error? If this is a large error, Karen may be puzzled about the difference between your forecast and the actual sales value. What can you do to resolve her uncertainty in the forecasting procedure?
Lost Beverage and Food Sales Case: Vintage Restaurant Sales (in $1000's)
MONTH First Year Second Year Third Year
January 242 263 282
February 235 238 255
March 232 247 265
April 178 193 205
May 184 193 210
June 140 149 160
July 145 157 166
August 152 161 174
September 110 122 126
October 130 130 148
November 152 167 173
December 206 230 235