Business Plans

Business plans are designed to serve as a written description of your businesses goals, obstacles, and path to success. Each business plan includes business concept presentation, marketing/customer analysis, and financial projections.

A business plan can be used to set goals, guide growth, attract investors or partners, and apply for grants and loans.

Business plans help plan for the future by formally identifying your business’s goals and the strategies necessary to attain them, the obstacles facing your business and your plan to overcome them, organizational framework (including titles, responsibilities, and staffing requirements), and the amount of capital necessary to break even--information critical to a venture's success. View a sample business plan.

VA FAIRS business plans are detailed and tailored to each venture and their respective industry. Our format is based on the Small Business Administration outline for a business plan and USDA guidelines for plans, adapted for each client’s needs.

Topics Included in a VA FAIRS Business Plan:

Background Information: including the history of the business, industry background, your mission statement, and the business’ goals and objectives.
Description of Products and/or Services: description of the current and future value added agricultural product(s) including the price and cost to produce.
Governance and Organizational Matters: How the business will be managed and organized including the legal structure of the business, board structure, key employee positions, and businesses advisers.
Marketing Plan: information on your customers and competitors, how to promote products, strategies for obtaining customers, evaluate market demands for your products and help you organize your marketing efforts to be most effective.
Financial Plan: detailed information about resources for running the business and your projections for profits, including income and cash-flow statements, balance sheets, break even analysis, and other financial documents. This is the most important part of the Business Plan.