Vidya Patel operates a newspaper stand in Grand Central Station, New York. As you might imagine, space is at a tremendous premium, and Vidya uses every inch of her 300 cubic feet (think in three dimensions-length, width, and height) of available space to stock a wide selection of newspapers, magazines, and snack-food items.

Vidya estimates that her contribution margin ratios on newspapers, magazines, and snack-food items are 10%, 25%, and 20%, respectively. In addition, for equivalent sales in dollars, newspapers take up 5 times as much space as magazines and 10 times as much space as snacks. However, since newspapers are the primary draw for Vidya's customers, she believes that at least 50% of her available space, or 150 cubic feet, must be devoted to newspapers. Finally, Vidya believes that 10% of her available space is enough to stock all of the popular snack-food items (i.e., she could devote less than 10% of her space to snack-food items, but devoting more than 10% would be wasteful as it would not generate additional snack-food sales).

Required:

a. What is Vidya's optimal allocation of space to newspapers, magazines, and snack-food items?

b. Suppose that Vidya allocates space according to your recommendation in part (a). For Vidya to recover her fixed costs of $2,700 per month, how much total sales revenue must she generate per cubic foot each month?