Office coffee for Harbour City

Fictional case

It is March 2027. Lantern’s catering clients keep asking whether Lantern could look after their office coffee every day, not only at events. Ana Lim is considering an office-coffee subscription for offices in Lantern’s district: a leased bean-to-cup machine, beans delivered weekly and a barista visit each quarter, for $14 a member of staff a month (offices of 10 or more staff; a 12-month contract). Before she commits to machine leases, a second van and a part-time barista, she wants research she can act on. Lantern, Ana, the offices, the suppliers and every figure are fictional.

What you have:

Ana’s planning figures: a launch makes $48,000 of contribution in its first year if demand is strong (20 or more offices sign up) and loses $30,000 if it is weak; before any research she puts the chance of strong demand at 40%. Not launching makes $0. The research below cost $6,000.
A business directory, bought in March 2027, listing the 600 offices with 10 or more staff in the district, by size band: 410 with 10–49 staff, 150 with 50–249 staff, 40 with 250 or more staff.
An office survey (March 2027): Ana invited 80 offices with 10–49 staff, 60 offices with 50–249 staff, 40 offices with 250 or more staff, chosen at random within each band, and asked the office manager about the current coffee arrangement, the monthly spend and interest in the offer at its price. 76 returned complete questionnaires.
Interviews with 8 office managers, coded remark by remark.
Competitors’ offers from published price lists and a quote an office manager shared with Ana, and the Harbour City Statistics Office’s 2026 count of people working in offices of 10 or more staff in the district (38,500).

What you will produce

The research objectives and what the research was worth before it was done.
A corrected questionnaire: what was wrong with the draft and where the price belongs.
The sampling plan explained, with the weights (offices ÷ replies in each band) and response rates.
Weighted estimates of interest, with their margin of error and what they can and can’t show.
The market sized from the top down and the bottom up (TAM, SAM and a first-year SOM) with the assumptions that drive it.
A comparison with competitors’ offers and the themes from the interviews.
A memo to Ana: launch, don’t launch, or test first, with the evidence and its limits.

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