Week 1 Business Case Workshop: The Plant Truck and the Weekend Street Fair

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you sorted the coffee cart's situation into what sits inside it and what sits outside it, scanned the outside with PESTEL, and mapped the stakeholders a decision touches. In this workshop you do the same for a different small business, an illustrative mobile plant truck, and then use your sort to make a real decision: should the truck take a spot at a new weekend street fair? Finally, you check a chatbot's analysis of the same case and correct it by hand.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: Where does the plant truck stand, inside and outside, and should it take a spot at the new weekend street fair once you weigh who is helped, who pays, and the strongest case against going?

Workshop data: An illustrative plant truck's thirteen facts

Source: Thirteen facts about an illustrative mobile plant truck and the world around it, written for this workshop and printed in full in Part 4; they are not real data and describe no real business, place, or person.

• Rows: 13 facts about one illustrative business; the sorting table in Part 4 has 13 rows
• People: one owner and one part-time helper, neither named
• Decision: whether to take a spot at a new weekend street fair downtown

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• A free spreadsheet (Google Sheets, or any free spreadsheet) for every computation; the SBA's free planning pages and SCORE's free templates for the plan; the SEC's EDGAR full-text search and investor.gov for what a real filing and a real security are; Census, BEA, and BLS data tables for real figures; and one approved chatbot used as a pair consultant whose numbers the student recomputes before trusting them

Ways of working

• analyze-the-case
• run-the-numbers
• recommend-and-defend

Procedure

1. Open a blank sheet in a free spreadsheet. Type Fact in cell A1, Place in cell B1, Effect in cell C1, and Tag in cell D1, then type the thirteen facts from Part 4 into cells A2 through A14. Tool: A free spreadsheet (Google Sheets, or any free spreadsheet) for every computation; the SBA's free planning pages and SCORE's free templates for the plan; the SEC's EDGAR full-text search and investor.gov for what a real filing and a real security are; Census, BEA, and BLS data tables for real figures; and one approved chatbot used as a pair consultant whose numbers the student recomputes before trusting them. Check: Rows 2 through 14 each hold one fact, and row 1 holds the four labels.
2. For each fact, type inside or outside in column B and helps or hurts in column C, using the two questions from the chapter: does the owner control it, and does it help or hurt the truck? Tool: A free spreadsheet (Google Sheets, or any free spreadsheet) for every computation; the SBA's free planning pages and SCORE's free templates for the plan; the SEC's EDGAR full-text search and investor.gov for what a real filing and a real security are; Census, BEA, and BLS data tables for real figures; and one approved chatbot used as a pair consultant whose numbers the student recomputes before trusting them. Check: Every fact has a place and an effect, so each one now belongs to exactly one SWOT box.
3. In cell F1 type =COUNTIF(B2:B14,"inside") and in cell F2 type =COUNTIF(B2:B14,"outside"). Copy both counts into the first table in Part 4, and write the addition that checks them against the thirteen facts. Tool: A free spreadsheet (Google Sheets, or any free spreadsheet) for every computation; the SBA's free planning pages and SCORE's free templates for the plan; the SEC's EDGAR full-text search and investor.gov for what a real filing and a real security are; Census, BEA, and BLS data tables for real figures; and one approved chatbot used as a pair consultant whose numbers the student recomputes before trusting them. Check: The two counts in F1 and F2 add up to 13; if they do not, a fact is missing a place or has a typing error.
4. For each outside fact, type a PESTEL letter or the word competitor in column D. In cell F3 type =COUNTIF(D2:D14,"competitor") to count the competitors, and complete the second table in Part 4. Tool: A free spreadsheet (Google Sheets, or any free spreadsheet) for every computation; the SBA's free planning pages and SCORE's free templates for the plan; the SEC's EDGAR full-text search and investor.gov for what a real filing and a real security are; Census, BEA, and BLS data tables for real figures; and one approved chatbot used as a pair consultant whose numbers the student recomputes before trusting them. Check: Every outside fact carries one tag, and the inside facts have no tag.
5. Complete the stakeholder table in Part 4 for the street-fair decision: for each of the seven groups, say who fills it for the truck and how the fair could help or hurt that group. Tool: A free spreadsheet (Google Sheets, or any free spreadsheet) for every computation; the SBA's free planning pages and SCORE's free templates for the plan; the SEC's EDGAR full-text search and investor.gov for what a real filing and a real security are; Census, BEA, and BLS data tables for real figures; and one approved chatbot used as a pair consultant whose numbers the student recomputes before trusting them. Check: All seven rows are filled, and at least one group is hurt or asked to give something up.
6. Write your recommendation on the street fair in 5–8 sentences, then paste the Part 6 prompt into one approved chatbot (or use the equivalent route), compare its answer with your tables, and write the critique report. Tool: A free spreadsheet (Google Sheets, or any free spreadsheet) for every computation; the SBA's free planning pages and SCORE's free templates for the plan; the SEC's EDGAR full-text search and investor.gov for what a real filing and a real security are; Census, BEA, and BLS data tables for real figures; and one approved chatbot used as a pair consultant whose numbers the student recomputes before trusting them. Check: You have a recommendation that names a stakeholder, the counter-case, and what would change your mind, plus a critique that quotes and corrects specific sentences.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if a spreadsheet will not open or a formula will not run.

Work every step by hand from the facts printed in Part 4: mark each fact inside or outside and helps or hurts on paper, count each box with tally marks, check that the counts add up to thirteen, and fill in the stakeholder table. Complete every analysis question and the critique step, and submit the same items for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

Part 4 — The Scaffold

Sort every fact first, because each later step reads from this table.

Student scaffold table 1

Fact	Inside or outside	Helps or hurts	SWOT box
The owner grows most of the plants in a backyard greenhouse.
The truck can park wherever plant buyers gather.
Regular customers follow the truck's posted schedule.
The truck holds only so many plants at once.
The part-time helper can work only weekday afternoons.
Plants wilt if the truck sits in full sun for long.
A new weekend street fair downtown is inviting vendors.
More people in the city are taking up indoor gardening.
A nearby community garden wants a supplier for seedlings.
A garden-center chain is opening a branch across town.
A hot, dry summer is forecast for the region.
The city is reviewing its fees for vendor permits.
Prices for pots and soil are rising across the economy.

Count the boxes and check the counts against the thirteen facts before you trust them.

Student scaffold table 2

Quantity	Your arithmetic	Your count
Inside facts (strengths + weaknesses)
Outside facts (opportunities + threats)
Check: inside + outside
Outside facts tagged as a competitor

Map who the street-fair decision touches, so your recommendation weighs more than the owner.

Student scaffold table 3

Stakeholder group	Who it is for the plant truck	How the street fair could help or hurt this group
Owners
Employees
Customers
Suppliers
Lenders
The community
Government

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Write the additions that give the number of inside facts and the number of outside facts, check that they account for all thirteen, and say in a full sentence what the counts tell the owner.
2. Which outside fact was most tempting to file as a strength, and what test from the chapter kept it outside the truck?
3. Pick two outside facts with different PESTEL tags and explain how each could change the truck's plans, keeping the fair's possible revenue separate from its profit.
4. Choose one: (a) write your recommendation on the street fair in 5–8 sentences, naming one stakeholder who pays, the strongest case against your choice, and the fact that would change your mind; or (b) argue the side you did not choose as strongly as you can in 5–8 sentences, then say in two sentences why you still hold your view or why you changed it.
5. A SWOT is a snapshot built from the facts someone chose to list. Name one fact the owner might have left out, and explain how adding it could change your recommendation.

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed Week 1 Business Case Workshop tables above. They describe an illustrative mobile plant truck invented for a class activity, not a real business. The truck sells houseplants and herbs, has one owner and one part-time helper, and lists thirteen facts: the owner grows most of the plants in a backyard greenhouse; the truck can park wherever plant buyers gather; regular customers follow the truck's posted schedule; the truck holds only so many plants at once; the part-time helper can work only weekday afternoons; plants wilt if the truck sits in full sun for long; a new weekend street fair downtown is inviting vendors; more people in the city are taking up indoor gardening; a nearby community garden wants a supplier for seedlings; a garden-center chain is opening a branch across town; a hot, dry summer is forecast for the region; the city is reviewing its fees for vendor permits; prices for pots and soil are rising across the economy. Please do six things. First, sort all thirteen facts into a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) and count how many sit inside the business and how many sit outside it. Second, tag each outside fact with a PESTEL force or call it a competitor. Third, recommend whether the truck should take a spot at the new weekend street fair, and say who is helped and who is hurt. Fourth, tell me how big the city's indoor-gardening market is in dollars and how much more profit the fair will bring. Fifth, tell me which legal form and which permits this owner needs, and compare the truck with the early history of a well-known garden chain. Sixth, as a stretch question for later in the course, compute the truck's break-even and draw up its opening balance sheet.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often list the weekend street fair or the indoor-gardening trend under strengths because both are good news for the truck.
• Asked for the size of the indoor-gardening market, chatbots often state a confident dollar figure or a growth percentage with no source.
• Chatbots often say the fair's crowds will raise the truck's profit, treating more sales as more profit.
• Chatbots often tell the owner exactly which legal form to choose and which permits to file, as if they knew this owner's city and situation.
• Asked to compare with a well-known garden chain, chatbots often tell a confident origin story or quote the chain's sales with no filing behind it.
• Chatbots often say the truck should take the fair spot because it can only help, without weighing the helper who works only weekday afternoons or the case against going.
• Chatbots often fill the recommendation with general advice such as focus on customer service, build a strong brand, and use social media, none of which comes from the thirteen facts.
• Asked for a break-even, chatbots often invent a price and a cost and divide one by the other, sometimes dividing costs by the price instead of by the amount each sale contributes.
• Asked for an opening balance sheet, chatbots often invent amounts, and the made-up assets often fail to equal what the owner owes plus what the owner put in.

Write 3–5 sentences naming one thing the chatbot got right and at least two places it went wrong or overreached, quoting its words and correcting each with evidence from your own tables or this week's chapter.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis, printed here in full: "The plant truck's strengths are its backyard greenhouse, the new weekend street fair, and the indoor-gardening trend, so it is in a strong position. The city's indoor-gardening market is worth about 2,000,000 dollars a year, so there is plenty of room to grow. The fair's crowds will double the truck's profit. A famous national garden chain began as a single plant truck, so this truck can follow the same path. The owner should form an LLC before the first fair and can deduct the whole truck on this year's taxes. The truck should take the fair spot, because it can only help. To succeed, the owner should focus on excellent customer service, build a strong brand, and use social media. The truck breaks even after 550 plants, because its 7,700 dollars of costs divided by its 14-dollar plant price is 550. Its opening balance sheet shows assets of 13,500 dollars, a loan of 4,500 dollars, and the owner's money of 6,500 dollars." Mark it up: quote each flawed sentence, name what is wrong (an outside opportunity filed as a strength, a market figure with no source, revenue treated as profit, an unsourced story about a real firm, confident legal or tax advice for one owner, a one-sided recommendation, boilerplate that ignores the case, an invented break-even, or a balance sheet that does not balance), cite the evidence from your tables or the chapter, and write a corrected sentence beneath it; for the break-even and the balance sheet, say which later week of the course takes them up and that no such figure can come from this case. This route assesses the same objective (Objective 1 — describe what a business is — profit, risk, and the not-for-profit contrast — its stakeholders, the factors of production, and the forces in its external environment, and explain how economic systems, supply and demand, market structures, and the economy's health indicators shape business decisions) as the chatbot critique, takes comparable effort (about 30 minutes and 200–300 words), is scored by the same scoring criteria for the same credit, and its own submission artifact is the marked-up flawed analysis, posted in place of the chatbot share link and report.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• All three completed scaffold tables
• Written answers to all five analysis questions, including your recommendation
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis

Deliverable:

A short Business Case Workshop report on an illustrative plant truck: three completed tables (the sorted facts, the checked counts, and the stakeholder map for the street-fair decision), written answers to five analysis questions including a weighed recommendation, and a critique of a chatbot's analysis of the same case, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text. Choose a written, recorded, or visual form for your answers; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Sorting the case into a SWOT	All thirteen facts sit in the right box, the inside and outside counts are correct with the additions shown, and the counts are checked against the total.	The sort is shown, but one or two facts are misfiled, a count is off, or the check against the total is missing.	No sort is shown, or counts are given without the facts behind them.
Scanning the outside and mapping stakeholders	Every outside fact carries a fitting PESTEL tag or the competitor label, and all seven stakeholder rows name who fills the group and how the fair could help or hurt it.	Most outside facts are tagged and most stakeholder rows are filled, but a tag is missing or doubtful or some rows are blank.	No tags and no stakeholder map are submitted.
A weighed recommendation	The recommendation or the argued other side rests on named case facts, names at least one stakeholder who pays, states the strongest counter-case fairly, keeps revenue apart from profit, and says what would change the decision.	A position is taken and tied to some case facts, but the counter-case, the stakeholder who pays, or what would change the decision is missing.	No recommendation is given, or it repeats general advice with no case facts.
Critiquing the AI analysis or the printed flawed analysis	The chatbot's analysis, or on the equivalent route the printed flawed analysis, is quoted and at least two errors are corrected with evidence from the tables or the chapter, including any invented figure flagged as outside this case.	The critique names errors but corrects only one, or corrects without evidence, on either route.	No critique is submitted on either route, or the AI output or flawed analysis is accepted without checking.
Naming the limitation of the SWOT	The response names a specific fact the owner might have left out and explains how adding it could change the recommendation.	A limitation is named but not connected to the recommendation.	No limitation is named.

Quality Gate

• Every fact sits in exactly one SWOT box, and the inside and outside counts come from your own sort, never from a chatbot.
• Strengths and weaknesses are inside facts; opportunities and threats are outside facts, and no good-news outside fact is filed as a strength.
• Every outside fact carries a PESTEL tag or the competitor label.
• The recommendation names at least one stakeholder who pays, the strongest counter-case, and what would change the answer.
• Revenue and profit are kept apart; no profit, price, market size, or dollar figure is invented anywhere in the submission.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors with evidence from your tables or the chapter.