Target market
The major target market for the ‘Superhero’ café will be the kids and young families with children. Our ultimate goal is to provide quality food and an atmosphere where people will enjoy their meals while socializing with family members and friends. Furthermore, we also intend to provide a place for entertainment for the children and their parents. The target market is aimed at the health conscious consumer especially the parents who care about the food their kids eat that can be of health hazard, such as junk foods that can contribute to children’s obesity.
It is not possible for parents to know which food is bad, neutral or good for their kids. Therefore, it will be to the best of Superhero to provide food that will not have any health risk to the consumer. Through advertisement and providing educational tips to parents about the health of their children, and how they can maintain it by eating good food, we believe many of them will come to try our services.
Apart from providing food products to our customers, Super hero aims at providing playing fields for the kids and their parents as well as entertainment. Kids like having fun; hence the environment that we will create will enable kids to enjoy their good time together with the parents which we believe will help to reinforce family bonds. Comic books and movies will keep both the parents and kids entertained and long for more.
Demographic trends.
The population targeted is a young family with children and who do not have a high earning job.
The number of children is expected to rise to 4.37 million in 2012 form 3.98 million in 2003. The number of families is as well increasing in number and the demand for convenient of food is constantly increasing. Many families with both parents working find less time to prepare meals for their family and have less time dedicated to their children. They need quality food and entertainment at an affordable price which most of current cafés are not offering. This becomes an easy target group for our business. The cafe will also target single mothers who prefer fast and convenient food for their families. In the long run, this will provide a long–term market for our business by capturing their children’s loyalty.
The cafeteria is meant to host a delegation of about 400 guests per meal. This requires a broad base and mass to appeal the guest.
Because of the interest in high quality foods the café will provide a variety of food products at an affordable price. The perse menu will include items such as Spiderman Pizza, Hulk and Wolverine Burgers, Plastic Man French Fries, Cyclops Salads, Ice Man shakes, and Dr.
Octopus Pasta.
The entire family member needs will be catered for. Special attention will be paid to parents with toddlers, and preschoolers. The menus for children who cannot read will be accompanied with picture drawings to help them choose their meals. The perse kind of entertainments will allow for children to long coming back for more. Our affordable prices which will not leave the parents financially constrained will contribute for their coming back for our products and services frequently. The staff members will be given special training to enable them work with children and parents.
To capture a bigger market of the children, we shall offer first-do-it yourself cooking and campfire, which will help children participate in preparing the food they feel fascinated with. This on its own is a kind of fun to kids as many of them like participating in certain roles. This will contribute greatly in boosting our business.
The location of the café at the downtown will enable us draw customers that are also outside our target groups. This will include visitors in the area and the downtown shoppers. We believe our services and great taste of the products we offer will make them glad for the price they will have paid for their services and hence be frequent visitors of our cafe.
Challenges facing Super hero café
The biggest challenge that Super hero café will face is competition. There are businesses that have been in the market for so long that they have solidified their customer loyalty. This might seem a very challenging task to change the mind of such customers. To use a lower price to attract customers, some might think that the qualities of our services are low, while if we put a higher price than the others, the customers will again shun away from our cafe. Putting the price at the same level with the other business will not guarantee that the customer will leave the other cafes for super hero and this will not also guarantee a fair competition. Some of the cafes that are bound to give us high competition include Chuck–e–Cheese, Dave and Busters and Six Flags.
There are also Substitutes that could full fill some of the needs offered by Superhero Café which will give us a big challenge in the market. They are McDonalds, grocery stores of all kinds, movie theaters, and Fun Zone facilities that offer activities for children. Hence the café needs to offer unique persified product and services to be able to beat the competitors.
Customers usually seek for a variety of products and new experiences. This implies we will have to be very keen on the quality assurance and offer food and beverages that go with the changing and prevailing expectations of the customer.
Staffs are not always permanent in any organization. This will be also a challenge to us to be able to get and retain qualified employees. There is high competition of human resource that offers the hospitality industry. Therefore incase of employees turn over, the new employee will need more time for flexibility and adjustment in the organization before settling in the main stream. This will be a waste of resources in terms of time and money in training the new employees.
Distribution patterns
Superhero café will follow the direct distribution channel. Products to be used for the meals in the café will come from the producers. We will also identify and recruit a few farmers who are able and willing to supply us with fresh commodities such as vegetables, and animal produce. The farmers will be trained on organic farming so that they can be supplying us with organically produced commodities. This will ensure reduction in cost of production and will also act as a quality assurance to our consumers who are health conscious. After the preparation of our meals, our main customers will be those visiting our organization for their meals.
We shall also not depend on middlemen to supply us with entertainment materials, but we shall be sourcing directly from distributors. This will enable us to have the best and original materials for our customers and not counterfeits.
The customers’ awareness of the product will be made known to them through the Internet as well as other media advertising. We shall develop our own website for convenience of communication with our customers. The location site of our premise will also play a bigger role in ensuring that we have more customers.
With the expansion of the business, we shall be able to sale our productions through other retailers. This is because we do believe that selling our products through other retailers will reinforce our image as quality hospitality providers. In the meantime, we shall create brand awareness of our products through café visibility.
Our café shall be outsourcing other products at some point when it is felt that such activity will reduce the production cost. For instance, breads will be outsourced instead of baking directly in the café.
The café will be opened from morning to around midnight. This will enable the customers to have breakfast, lunch and diner, and enough time for the entertainment especially during the non working days.
The Café shall have a manager who will be supported by senior hourly lead employees. The employees will be performing such duties as cashier, limited food preparation etc.
The café manager or the lead employee will be required to order for appropriate food quantity from the central kitchen. The manager’s ordering procedure will be aided by the available information on trend and product volume.
The procurement officers will be responsible to source for high quality ingredients from reliable sources at a competitive price. Any entertainment movies shall also be vetted for its quality to ascertain if it is fit to be watched by kids or not before being shown to them. To ensure high quality ingredients are used to come up with high quality products, we shall be carrying out research from time to time to know how customers view and responds to our products.
The café plans to run franchisees as part of the distribution channel after completely taking a base in the market. The franchisees will be compensated depending on the mode of the way they carried out business. The workers and all the employees in the restaurant will also receive compensation both in monetary and non-monetary terms as away of motivating them to work hard.
Reference:
McKinney N. (2003): Real Business Plan & Marketing Tools, ISBN 1885288360, PREP Publishing