Cruzin' Catering Pictures

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This website is used for an MBA Thesis Paper (Business Plan for a Start-up Catering Company)

Buttons below are linked to sections of the Marketing Plan

                                                                                  

The catering business is extremely competitive, risky and tough to break into. We have identified a consumer need that is going unanswered, with the number of catering companies in the area not one offers the opportunity for the consumer to provide a recipe to a catering company to have at the special occasion. This provides the flexibility of everyone having a party to have something different and something they enjoy. The competition only offers items that are made from there menus and does not offer much variet   y.

According to National Restaurant Association, the restaurant industry’s direct sales are $476 billion a year (nationally), which is more than $1.3 billion a day. Including the impact restaurants have sales in related industries; the industry’s overall impact on the U.S. economy is $1.2 trillion a year – about 10 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. The restaurant industry is the nation’s largest private-sector employer. Restaurants employ 12.2 million people today and are expected to add 1.8 million new jobs between 2005 and 2016. Illinois restaurant statistics show that there are 30,000 locations with over 376,300 employees. The sales from the Illinois restaurant industry is $16.7 billion. The projected 2005 Economic impact of eating and drinking places is $40.9 billion.
 

Charts taken from National Restaurant Organization website (http://www.restaurant.org).

Cruzin cuisine’s emphasis is on providing party planners the ability to provide a recipe that can be created at their catered event. Not only will this provide a meal the party planner enjoys but this meal can be shared with others. The selected location in Oswego, Il. meets the demographic needs of our concept with a large number of corporations, new schools, new homes, parks, churches to enjoy our fine cuisine.
 

                                             

The product and service is catering food for such events as weddings, graduations, church events, office parties, school functions and more. The service of catering provides the guest/customer a chance to concentrate on other things than shopping, preparing, cooking and serving the food. This product and service is positioned so that the customer has some ownership in picking the items to be served instead of picking them off a menu. It is positioned strategically to offer customers a variety of food. Items can be selected for both vegetarian and non-vegetarians, also if customers have food allergies a recipe can be given to make sure the items they are allergic to are not in the dishes provided, which in turn will help make it a memorable event.

Cruzin’ Cuisine, to be located in Oswego, Illinois will provide personal catering services to residents in the Southwestern Suburban Chicago-land area. This service will include personalized and standard menu planning, setup of tables and decorations for event and preparation of catered entrees and side dishes. Price will vary according to menu selected. The meals will be pre-prepared upon arrival to the location of the event. All hot meals will be kept hot and the cold meals will be kept cold. Cruzin’ Cuisine will use all its own utensils and will do complete clean up of the catered area (if necessary).

 

The target market is the surrounding area of Oswego, Illinois. Oswego, Illinois is located 50 miles southwest of Chicago. Oswego is well situated at the southern end of the Fox River Valley in Kendall County, Illinois. The surrounding villages, town or cities are: Naperville, Aurora, Montgomery, Plainfield and Yorkville. Several of the villages/cities surrounding Oswego have been ranked among the 25 fastest growing cities in nation, according to the USA today.

The change in population by percentage from 2000 to 2010 is shown below.

Below are the charts of the 2 charts above (on population and percentage of population change).
 

As you can see from the statistics above from the United States Census Bureau, it is clear that this is a huge growing market. Much of the farmland in the area is being turned into residential, commercial and educational areas. This shows great potential for a start-up catering company (Cruzin’ Cuisine) to break into the market. With the number of new homes, schools, parks, commercial industry coming into the area the need for a new catering company is needed.
With the estimates of the population growing from 43% to over 200%, Cruzin’ Catering will focus on a specific target market. This specific target market will 10 elementary schools, 10 middle schools, 10 high schools, and 8 colleges, which are within Cruzin’ Catering headquarters. There are over 25,000 students within the schools mentioned below. This is a critical target market as the competition is not focusing on these specific schools and the competition is more mainstream.
 

The specific target market will be focusing mainly on graduations, school functions, and teacher appreciation week.
The consumer is likely to use a catering company for the following functions: (a) graduations, (b) weddings, (c) church functions, (d) employee appreciation lunches/dinners, (e) family gatherings, (f) holiday meals, and (g) school functions. With so many opportunities presenting themselves, many people do not have the time to prepare large meals for their special occasions.
 

                                                          

To learn about our target market and their needs, CC has conducted a survey of about 100 respondents. Some of the questions we asked and the results by percentage of all the respondents are shown below:

Do you plan on catering an event such as graduation, church function, or birthday?
a. Yes – 75%
b. No – 20%
c. Unsure – 5%

Have you ever had a function catered?
a. Yes – 80%
b. No – 20%


Would you use a local restaurant or local catering company to host your function?
a. Yes – 95%
b. No – 5%

Would you like to have more variety in picking a catering menu?
a. Yes – 100%
b. No – 0%

If a catering company offered you a chance to submit a recipe, which would be served at your catered event would you use this service?
a. Yes – 95%
b. No – 5%


Would you prefer the catering company to clean up after the event (box extra food, fold tables, remove trash)?
a. Yes – 99%
b. No – 1%



What do you normally pay per person for a catered event (excluding tip, tax and delivery)?
a. $5.99 or less – 9.5%
b. $6.00 – 9.00 - 22.8%
c. $9.01 – 12.00 – 32.7%
d. $12.01 or more - 35.0%

 

The leaders in the market where Cruzin Cuisine will be establishing its catering business (Cruzin Cuisine) are Portillo’s and Rosati’s Pizza. To understand the competition better, the management of Cruzin Cuisine have attached Exhibit 3 (Competitive sheet) for analysis. The relative strength of the competition is they have been in the market longer and have an established clientele. The weakness of the competition is they only serve food off the menus, some have servers and they do not clean up after the event. The strength of the Cruzin Cuisine is that a customer does not have to order food from the menu they can submit a recipe and a small sample will be made to taste. If the sample meets the customer’s expectations then it will be prepared and served at the event. Also Cruzin caterers will clean up the food area once the event is done. One of Cruzin Cuisine weakness is a newcomer to the industry and area.

 

                                                                                    EXHIBIT 3

Cruzin Cuisine’s competitive advantage is its ability to deliver consistently, high quality, personalized meals, custom menu planning, grocery shopping, and preparation of meals. According to Entrepreneur Magazine, some of the fastest growing trends in service businesses today include:
Servicing smaller, upscale markets
Products and services for children and their parents
Cruzin Cuisine is better positioned to service small, upscale markets in a personal way than are the other competitors. Cruzin Cuisine’s services are specifically geared toward large parties and organizations. Busy working parents have more quality time to spend with their children when they aren’t rushing to get food prepared for the event, and their children get a more nutritious meal. Cruzin Cuisine also has the advantage of being a home-based business, which requires lower overhead and start-up costs than a traditional catering business. The only type of catering services the grocery stores offer are lunch meat trays, cheese trays, chicken wing trays, etc and the competition offers menu driven items. Nothing as nice as the food the Cruzin Cuisine offers. Professional companies want professional products to offer their clients. That is what Cruzin Cuisine offers that.

                                                                                                        

The pricing strategy to be used is that of penetration pricing. The reason for using penetration pricing is to establish Cruzin Cuisine quickly into the market. This can be used because of the elastic demand, threat of strong competition and to get it into mass markets. This will help get a foot into the market to attract the larger clients to use the service.

The price for setting menu prices is determined by analyzing food cost. This is done by getting the list and price of all the ingredients needed, determining the amount of the portion size, the total cost of the dish and the value added to the customer. In order to enter the market the price would have to be set to at least $15.00 per person. Once a client database has been established the price would increase due to the value being provided to the customer. Cruzin Cuisine is offering an exceptional value because you can create your own menu for your events.

                                                        
                                                                        

As a start up business, we recognize the need for exposure. The marketing efforts of Cruzin’ Cuisine consists of aggressive advertising as well as sales promotions and public relations. Due to the small size of our business, and a limited budget, out management team has decided not to contract the services of a Public Relations company or Advertising agency. Cruzin Cuisine will be using its own intellectual capital to brainstorm and perform our own research in order to promote Cruzin’ Cuisine. While our service has several strong, unique competitive advantages, Cruzin Cuisine will focus its initial advertising on menu flexibility to more clearly distinguish ourselves from the competition in a meaningful way. The benefit focused on will be that of Cruzin Cuisines our flexibility which is the customizable nature of our service offering. The primary advertising mediums include Beacon Newspaper (suburban paper), Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Value-pack, Yellow Pages, and the internet.

                                                                    

Cruzin’ Cuisines’ aggressive advertising and promotion campaign in its introduction phase will focus on creating awareness of its service offerings and acquisition of new customers. Focusing on the unique aspect of this customized service (customer recipes) and a mix of marketing vehicles will convey our presence, our image and our message.

Print Media – local newspapers, magazines, church bulletins, school publications
Broadcast media – local cable programming, internet.
Hotel guides – Chamber of commerce brochures.
Direct mail – subscriber list, value-pack, supersaver.
Misc. – yellow pages, charity events, local events, sponsoring local teams.

The marketing effort will be split into 3 phases:
1) Opening – An advanced notice (press packet) sent out to all media and printed announcements in surrounding businesses, newspaper advertisement and local school-paper advertising.
2) Ongoing – A flexible campaign (using variable media) assessed regularly for effectiveness
3) Point of sale – Well trained sales team can increase the average check as well as enhancing the customers’ overall experience. Word-of-mouth referral is very important in building a customer base.

Cruzin’ Cuisine will establish brand awareness within its market through the following:

Positioning : Our catering name (Cruzin’ Cuisine) was chosen to represent our customers’ ease in ordering a catering event – when they have finished dining, we are convinced that they will feel as they have “CRUISED” through the event – what it means to have an event catered. Cruzin’ Cuisine will feature homemade items such as salads, soups and desserts. All products that are prepared will be made with fresh, gourmet ingredients.

From the viewpoint of the consumer, our menu and special service will be superior to other catering establishments. Our concept is narrow, deep and focused. The provide a recipe and we will serve concept at your catering event provides an added enjoyment and experience for the person coordinating the catering function. This is an opportunity that no other caterer provides and it offers a most memorable catering experience.

The advertising will focus on what differentiates Cruzin’ Cuisine from its competition. This differentiation strategy will focus on menu options, customer service, value, quality and consistency.

Below is a Grand Opening sample ad created for the Beacon News, that differentiates our catering service.

 

                                                     

Cruzin Cuisine will run several major sales promotions (during graduation time/holidays) for the first year. Discounts off of standard pricing typically run about 5% to 10%. We will promote these sales incentives with coupons and flyers, mailings to local residents, newspaper, radio advertising and the internet.

The internet plays a vital role in advertisement, a website will be created to help create the operation support role – but it will also have some promotional role. On the website, we will offer service information, menu selections, prices and helpful hints in planning catering event, discount coupons that may be printed out and information on how to contact us. We will promote our website in all our literature, by listing our web address everywhere.

Cruzin Cuisine will offer free estimates and samples of our products. It will use this free offer as an opportunity to familiarize the prospective customers with our business, emphasize our competitive advantages and try to close the deal.

                                                                          

Cruzin’ Cuisine target consists of the following:
* Homeowners with a household income of $35,000 and above per year
*  Homeowners that do not want to cook for a large event
* Young homeowners with children to age 45
*  Businesses that provide food at company functions
*  Church and Schools holding events


In order for Cruzin’ Cuisine to reach our target market, a number of advertising mediums will be used. Below are the advertising mediums that will be used:

¨ Newspapers (local suburban, Chicago Sun-Times and Tribune)
                 > Cruzin Cuisine’s target market is easily accessible because they are in a centralized location. Cruzin’ Cuisine will distribute media kits to all suburban newspaper in the target market. It will start placing a weekly ad for the Grand Opening a month before the event and increase it to a daily ad as the grand opening date becomes closer. A one-page ad will be placed in the Beacon News (part of Suburban Chicago Newspapers) which reaches over 175,000 readers in the target market. The cost of advertising is $5,000. The cost of advertising in the Sunday Chicago Tribune in the Food section would be approximately $30,000 to reach the target market. The benefits of advertising in newspaper include flexibility, timeliness, good local market coverage and a reliable source.
¨ Internet (Banner Ads)
                   > The target market will be reached via the Internet when accessing specific internet sites within the local area and also when looking up for catering or restaurants. The advertising on the web will be a 468 X 60 banner. The two ways to advertise on the web are through impressions banners or click-thrus. The cost of impressions would be a one-time setup fee for $20 and a monthly charge of $10 to $70. The cost of click-thrus (which is a charge per click) would be $20 to $250.

¨ Direct Mail
                    > Direct Mail will reach residents in our target market. The direct mail piece would include a flyer detailing our business, a business card magnet as well as promotional coupons. The cost to produce 250,000 brochures and business cards is $13,000. The cost of envelopes would be $6000. The cost of the mailing list is $7,500. The advantages of direct mailing are that is directly targets the market in the surrounding areas, both businesses and homes.


Other alternative ways to advertise would be by billboard, radio, cable, realtors and working with the surrounding Chamber of Commerce townships to provide a welcome kit to new residences and businesses.

The objective of advertising is to establish consumer awareness, create a positive perception of the catering company, encourage first time clients to use our service, to gain high percentages of return customers and ultimately create brand loyalty.

Question/ Comments

cruzincuisine@comcast.net 

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