Question:

Answer:

1. Introduction and Business Overview

a. Background of the selected organization

The chosen organization for the report is Candlenut Kitchen, which is a restaurant in Singapore situated at the Dempsey Road of the country. The restaurant has been featured in many local and international publications such as Singapore’s “8 Days” magazine, diningcity and London’s Financial Times. The restaurant is widely known for its few selective dishes such as Peranakan cuisine, which also won a one star rating for the company from the Michelin Guide of Singapore edition (DanielFoodDiary.com 2017). Despite the success, the restaurant is found to be less active on innovative ideas, which could add new dimensions to the existing business. Innovative dimension such as the inception of a new service, which is feasible to the requirements of the community, is yet to be considered. The main purpose of this assignment is to identify a new service for the company, which could enhance its existing business and the revenues. The learner has identified a potential new service for the company, which is to deliver the foods to the official population in Singapore.

b. Introduction of the proposed service

The proposed new service for the Candlenut Kitchen Company is the delivery of foods at the official premises in Singapore. The service is chosen for various reasons such as the potentiality of the food delivery services in Singapore and the business culture in the country. The new service is itself selected for a fact that Singapore is widely known as one of the richest and technically advanced countries in the world (Teoh et al. 2013). This is the one reason that has made things worked for a new business in Singapore. People respond to any new potential concept. The business culture of the country has attracted the views of the learner towards the concept of food delivery services at the office places. The sector is preoccupied with some big names such as UberEATS, Foodpanda and Deliveroo (Radzi et al. 2013). However, the growth of the industry with the passage of time just supports a fact that the industry has many things in it to offer it to the service provider. The particular services is selected because it has in it potential prospects to the service providers. This is because according to a study approximately around 29% of Singaporeans prefer having lunch at their desk. This is because they have less time and they cannot afford to go off the work for a significant time span. This is because of the scarcity of sufficient numbers of workforces in the country (Duruz and Khoo 2014). The chosen service idea is just for grabbing the opportunities, which are expanding with the passage of time. The increasing demands of customer service and a subsequent rising demand for extra works have both encouraged the employees for such business culture.

c. Positioning

The target market for the service is all the official places in Singapore. This is because a high numbers of employees prefer having their lunch at the desk (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2015). They are busy with their hectic schedules. They have extra burdens on their shoulders because of the scarcity of workforces at the workplace. Globalization has integrated many international companies at the common platform. The business operation in the local country is not just limited to the local country area. Few of them have rather their presence at the global platform as well. The entrance of Uber and Deliveroo in the food sector is just some example of foreign companies operating at the international platform. The targeted market has potential in it because the trend for having lunch at the desk is rising with the changing environment of business (Denison et al. 2012).

The Candlenut Kitchen would face severe competition from the already established brands such as UberEATS, Deliveroo and Foodpanda. The rising culture for lunch at the desk has already attracted many giants towards it. Giant service providers such as UberEATS, Deliveroo and Foodpanda have already heated the industry. Foodpanda is the leader of all the service providers; however, Deliveroo has been rated the best service provider in Singapore. Deliveroo in particular has targeted offices in major companies. This particular area is a potential sector for the food service providers (Seah 2017).

The services offered by the Candlenut Kitchen would be different in many ways from its existing rival companies. The chosen company would deliver the order within half an hour, which is a rare feat for the giant companies in the targeted sector. Deliveroo is the best in such services; however, it still takes approximately around 38 minutes for delivering the foods to the offices (Seah 2017). The chosen company would also differ in the prices offered for the services by other companies.

2. Analyzing the new service concept & Marketing plan

a. Product

The chosen service for the Candlenut Kitchen Company is the delivery of foods to the offices especially to the offices of major companies. The particular service is selected because it would provide a potential market to the chosen restaurant company. The market is potential because of the job culture of the country where a significant numbers of employees prefer doing lunch at the desk. This happens because they have less time to go outside to some food vendors or restaurants to have their required meal. The rising pressure of works at the workplace has made life busier for the employees in Singapore (Roy and Gupta 2014).

The proposed change is a major change for the Candlenut Kitchen Company not because it is a new concept as few third parties are already operating in this segment; it is indeed because the restaurant would have its own online delivery system. This is a new concept for different restaurant companies operating in the country. The product would be the lunch menu for the different offices in Singapore especially the offices surrounding to the restaurant. Five different bento would be offered on a weekly basis. Each bento would consist of a main, 1 soup of the day, a iced tea or coffee. This would also include an appetiser (Davis et al. 2013).

A website would be designed accordingly, which would facilitate the interface required for making bookings online. This is the first supplementary service, which would be required by the Candlenut Kitchen Company for implementing the proposed service. Another supplement service would be a mobile app featuring the company’s website, which would provide the online booking facilities on the Smartphones. The user interface at both the desktop website and the mobile website would be designed in such a way to suit the needs of mass customers. Moreover, employees at the offices would feel it easy to use the booking facilities. Bookings would be responded in real time. The third supplementary service would be to use the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. This would be required to have an effective customer relationship management, which is very important for maintaining a healthy service (Sakas, Vlachos and Nasiopoulos 2014). Nevertheless, Deliveroo has bettered the service department with its short delivery time. This has helped them become more popular than the number one food service provider Foodpanda. Foodpanda is more specific in acquiring a large number of restaurant clients whereas Deliveroo is more specific to quality of service. They have less numbers of restaurant clients than the Foodpanda.

b. Pricing and revenue management

Figure 1: Pricing Tripod

Source: (Yang et al. 2015)

The pricing for the services would be done following the Pricing Tripod strategy, which states three kinds of pricing for entering into the market. The first strategy is cost based pricing, which is assigned to the product with a view to earn profit on the cost of the product. The second one is value to customer, which encourages for a pricing that has values for the customer’s needs. The last strategy is competition based pricing where companies tend to offer cheaper rates in order to gain competitive advantage over its competitors. For the chosen service for the Candlenut Kitchen Company, the competition based pricing of the Pricing Tripod would be used. This is because the restaurant company wants to follow the footsteps of Foodpanda, which focus more on expanding its customer base. This is exactly the primary focus of the new service for the Candlenut Kitchen Company. With this service, the company has its intention to reach to a large customer base in order to generate a maximum earning potential (Bharadwaj et al. 2013).

The pricing strategy would be decided with the help of Rate Fences strategy, which states that the prices for the services should be segmented based on its feasibility to the target audience. The Candlenut Kitchen Company has targeted a mass spread of its service, which means the service would include all the major or smaller companies (Miller and Welch 2013). The delivery would be entertained against a minimum of 20 orders per department and 100 orders per company. For retail staffs, at least 30 orders per building would be required. The delivery timing would be 12:30pm. For the retail staffs, the delivery timing would be 2pm. The target offices would be those that are close to the restaurant area of Candlenut Kitchen. In this regard, those companies would be such as Redhill, Queenstown, Holland and Orchard. The delivery charges would cost $3 per capping at 20 orders per department or 100 orders per company. For the retail staffs, it would be capped at 30 orders per building. The order placement would be on a weekly basis and would be prior to the first day of the week. Suppose, if today is 29^th then the order would be entertained for the week that starts from 31^st of the month. This strategy looks appropriate to gain a maximize revenues. Cheap prices are offered to gain competitive advantage. This would be a start-up strategy. The responses would decide the future strategy (Blank 2013).

c. Distribution services

The brick and mortar channel for the distribution of the proposed service would be internet communication channels (Pauwels and Neslin 2015). Candlenut Kitchen Company would have its own website that would allow the booking facilities to the customers. They would just need to log in to the company’s portal from where they can book their orders. Two payment’s method would be provided to the customers such as the online payment option through debit or credit cards or cash on delivery payment mode. Apart from the card details, customers would also be asked to provide their location details. Some new workers would be recruited especially for the delivery purpose. They would be given the responsibilities to deliver the ordered meal to the exact location. The hired workforces would be given Smartphones through which they would be able to track the exact location (Jobe 2013).

The use of internet channel for establishing the communication with the clients is indeed an effective way, which is already in practice in Singapore. Giant companies such as Deliveroo, Foodpanda and UberEATS are already in this kind of service. The order delivery system is also in existence for quite a long time in the country. Use of GPS system in Smartphones is another good way, which is of high use for detecting the client’s location. It can effectively help to save some time, which is very important for delivering the order within a short span of time (Martins, Oliveira and Popovič 2014).

d. Promotion and education

Figure 2: Laswell’s 5 W’s Model for Effective Communication

Source: (McQuail and Windahl 2015)

Laswell has proposed an effective communication model widely known as 5 W’s model. The model would be highly useful for the proposed service. According to the 5 W’s model, the target audience for the Candlenut Kitchen Restaurants would be the all official persons of numerous major and smaller companies in Singapore.  The communication would be done for the proposed service through different modes of media communication. The objective behind this communication is to get maximum attention of mass public. The objective is also to interact with the mass public and the media personnel, which is very important for the publicity of the introduced service. There are various media mix such as online advertisements, paper advertisements, PR event, television advertisements and few others. For the proposed service, the Candlenut Kitchen would use the online media and PR event as its tools for communicating the message. The proposed service would be communicated on various online social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. This would also be communicated at some widely popular daily soap in television. All the communication process would take place before the launch of the proposed service. This is just to give pre release hype to the service. This is indeed important for a healthy response from customers. These communication methods help to win the customer’s loyalty, which is very important for the success of the proposed service (Gordon 2012).

e. Service environment

The start up of a new business concept requires some physical evidences in support of the fact. These physical evidences help to attract the attention of customers towards the offering. In other words, it can also be said that these physical evidences are a resource to indirect communication with customers in relation to new business concept launch (Wirtz 2012). There are many physical evidences that can help to advertise the new business concept in physical terms such as the Web pages, Business cards, Employee dress, Billing statements and Brochures. For the introduction of new business concept for Candlenut Kitchen following would be the ideal physical evidences:

• Business cards– This would contain some information such as the name of the company, address line 1, address line 2, Website and order line information.

Figure 3: Business Card Sample

(Source: Guffey and Loewy 2012)

• Brochures– It is another kind of information paper, which is folded in the form of a leaflet, pamphlet and template. This would contain in detail the list of foods to offer, rates of respective meals and other stuffs, prices for the respective foods, delivery charges and time etc. The brochure would look like as follows:

Figure 4: Brochure Sample

(Source: Bargiela-Chiappini and Nickerson 2014)

• Web pages– This is perhaps the biggest platform where employees in the targeted companies around the Candlenut Kitchen Restaurant or the other parts of the location would be able to see all the information such as the company’s details, services offered, restaurant locations, addresses, phone lines and many more. The Website would look like as follows:

Figure 5: Website Sample

(Source: Rahimnia and Hassanzadeh 2013 )

f. Process

Constructing blueprint is a good way for restaurant business to keep it safe from quality destruction. It is always expected that customer would complaint regarding the quality of food, delivery timing etc. Nonetheless, problems are not limited to this only; it would rather encourage the back end staffs for an inter clash in hunt to prove one another as the responsible body behind the service failure. Blueprint for such situations appears as a weapon to fight against all the odds and to save the quality standard of the services offered. The blueprint for the proposed food delivery service would contain the following (Traitler 2015):

Prioritisation of matrix– The quality of the service is complained for the taste of food or the late delivery of the food. In the proposed business plan for the Candlenut Kitchen, the booking system would be made on a weekly basis. Targeted customers would be able to book their weekly orders in advance. For example, if someone has to book an order for lunch meal, the one would be entertained for the coming week starting from 31^st. This would help the company get ample time to prepare the order.

Apart from the mentioned strategy, the delivery time would also include the expected late in delivery such as because of transportation or any other issues. The commitment would include all such factors. This would help the company gain on their delivery time. For example, if an order can be delivered within a half an hour then customers would be given a time a little more than the half an hour.

Points of failure– This is related to all those things that hamper the process and are necessary to be identified in order to fix it and raise the service standard.

Redesigning activities to fix the errors– The redesigning activity would be the structuring of the necessary components of Blueprint. This would help the Candlenut Kitchen in reducing the service failures and increasing the quality standard. Following are the required components for the Blueprint structuring (Polaine, Løvlie and Reason 2013):

• Customer actions– It would include various activities such as booking of delivery through mobile app or Company’s Website, making payments on receiving the order either through cash or by debit/credit card, rating the service or quality of the product either through mobile or on Website.
• Onstage employee actions– It would include the delivery of the order, receiving the cash payment if it is made, behaving politely to the customers, apologising for any quality & service related failure and communicating the customer’s verbal feedbacks to the supervising body.
• Backstage employee actions– It would include the communication of requested order to the support team, communicating the customer’s complaints if there is any and the confirmation of the quantity of the order to the support team.
• Support process– They would take care of the preparation of the order, allocating the order to an appropriate deliveryman etc.

g. People

Figure 6: Service Talent Cycle

(Source: Poocharoen and Lee 2013)

Service Talent Cycle can help the Candlenut Kitchen in building up the required skills for the proposed new business plan. The framework suggests that the human resource management of the Candlenut should first hire the right people. The framework in the later part encourages the training for the development of required skills such as Website handling and Order delivery with utmost care to customer service. In the final part, the framework encourages the motivation, which is required for keeping the hired employees engaged with their roles and responsibilities. Motivational factors would include various things such as Pay, Bonus, Job Convenience, Feedback and Recognition.

Conclusion

The proposed strategy for the new business plan and the strategy making on every essential requirements of it is a great challenge ahead for the Candlenut Kitchen. Despite of al the challenges, the concept is promising. This is not because it is a new concept for the market but because it is new for the Candlenut Kitchen Restaurant. The market has already three giant competitors such as Foodpanda, UberEATS and Deliveroo. All three have their own genre of expertise but the proposed plans and strategies for the Candlenut should work in its favour. Gradually, with the passage of time, this could capitalise a potential market, which is expanding in its popularity with the passage of time.

The proposed business plan has some weakness in it as well. It might face the service quality related escalations, which is highly feasible with this concept. The delivery might sometime be delayed with some unexpected reasons. This can hamper the business in big numbers as customers have many other options such as Foodpanda, UberEATS, Deliveroo, which are already performing good in this sector. For a long-term partnership with customers, it is a great challenge for the Candlenut Kitchen to attain and maintain their service reputation.

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