How Scenarios Work

What a scenario is, what you submit each week, and how your decisions interact with your store type.

Receiving a scenario

Your teacher creates scenarios that simulate running your store during a period (usually a week).
When a scenario is created, you'll get an email and it will appear on your student dashboard.
Each scenario has a deadline—submit your decisions before the deadline.

In each scenario, you act as the manager of your store.
Review the scenario details, make a plan, and record your decisions for that period.
Your decisions are called your submission.
After the deadline, submissions are locked and used to simulate what happens at your store.

Submission variables are the choices you make each scenario.
They represent your judgment, priorities, and strategy as a manager.
They don't change what your store is; they describe how you operate within your store's constraints this week.

Store type variables describe what kind of store you have (capacity, costs, baseline pricing, constraints).
Submission variables describe how you run that store this week.
You can't change your store type during a scenario, but your submission sits on top of it.
The same decision can produce different results depending on the store type (e.g., aggressive ordering is riskier in a small food truck than a large restaurant).

Demand outlook: how busy you expect the week to be (low / average / high).
Inventory risk tolerance: what worries you more—running out (stockout aversion) vs leftovers/waste (overstock aversion) vs balanced.
Restocking intensity (refrigerated): how aggressively you restock cold ingredients (expensive + spoilage risk).
Restocking intensity (ambient): your plan for shelf-stable ingredients (cash + space tradeoff).
Restocking intensity (operating supplies): how cautious you are about running out of boxes/napkins/gloves (reliability vs spending).
Production push: how hard you try to convert inventory into sales (output vs feasibility).
Waste discipline: how strict you are about minimizing waste (efficiency vs speed).
Pricing adjustment: adjusting price relative to your store's baseline (margin vs demand).
Service level focus: what you prioritize—cost-focused vs service-focused vs balanced.

There's no single correct set of decisions.
The goal is to practice tradeoffs, see how decisions interact with constraints, and learn under uncertainty.
After the scenario runs, you'll review results and learn how your strategy played out.