Key Partnersare the relationships that you have with other business, governmental, or non-consumer entities that help your business model work. These can be the relationships that your company has with your suppliers, your manufacturers, business partners, etc. These partnerships that you will undoubtedly create will be forces that help your business succeed in areas that would be inefficient for you to do yourself.
4 Types of Partnerships
1. Strategic alliances between non-competitors: This means that you and a company that you have no direct competition with, industry wise, will partner together in ways that will benefit the both of you.
Example: You can partner with a manufacturer to produce a part of your business product that you yourself may not be able to manufacture. In return, you have a contract to pay for these parts that your partner has made you.
2. Coopetition: This is thestrategic partnership between competitors. This one is a little wacky; it means that companies who may be directly competing will still work together to generate awareness for their shared industry, in the attempt to gain new users for all those in the industry to compete for.
3. Joint Ventures to develop new businesses: Here you may join your company with another to create an entirely different entity,which may be more profitable for the both of you than if you were to operate separately. Example: Blu-ray is an optical disc format jointly developed by a group of the world’s leading consumer electronics, personal computer, and media manufacturers.
4. Buyer-supplier relationships: Specifically, building reliable relationships with a buyer or supplier. You need to incorporate the characteristics of trust, quality, and commitment between the two entities.
Our Experience:
Crepe Expectations-The crepe food truck would need to partner with quite a few number of entities to be able to operate effectively in the College Station area, and actually in any town. The general list of partners the food truck would need would include:
1. The city of College Station. We would need to obtain multiple permits from the city to be able to label ourselves as a recognized business entity as well as be able to operate a mobile food stand.
2. Texas A&M University. As a food truck in a college town we would cater to students and faculty as one of our main revenue streams. Therefore, we would have to work closely with the university to be able to get permission to set up our food truck and sell our food on their campus.
3. Owners of plazas or parking lots. The food truck would also like to target the population of College Station that would revolve around crowded public places, such as plazas or the Northgate district. We would have to work with owners of parking lots and spaces to get permission to set up and sell in these areas.
4. Truck and Equipment Suppliers. We would need to find the right suppliers to get our start up equipment and a truck. We would likely do business with these same entities if we found them to be fair in our initial interactions.
5. Food suppliers. This would be our biggest partnership, as we would want to find the best food suppliers for our needs so that we could maintain a certain quality for our food, as well as desired margins for our business.
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