Week 4

Heather Pierce

Strayer University

BUS 599

Dr. B

July 22, 2022

Product/service

Delicacy Spot seeks to offer snacks to customers looking for fast food within Miami Florida. Due to the busy schedule that people have in the modern world, especially college and university students and working population, demand for fast food has increased significantly since these populations lack time to cook their meals and thus prefer to buy snacks as they go about their daily activities. Therefore, the business seeks to capitalize of this business opportunity by offering fast food snacks to this market audience. The business will offer a menu with a wide variety of snacks includes cookies, beef rolls, potato chips, burger, pizza, ice cream, chocolate bars among other snacks based on demand and requested by customers. The business will offer both take away services and also sit in services.

Mission statement

Mission statement for the business is “Delicacy Spot seeks to offer a unique customer experience by proving high quality snacks in timely manner at a pocket friendly price.” The mission statement defines the main objective of the business and communicates to the customers what the business is all about the value it offers to the customers. The mission statement speaks what the business offers to the customers. “Unique customer experience” shows that the business is focused on providing high quality services that customers cannot find anywhere else. It seeks to attract customers to experience the unique customer services. “Timely manner” shows that the business will offer fast services. Majority of fast-food joints tend to have long queues as a result of slow services. Therefore, the phrase “timely manner” in the mission statement shows that the business will focus on offering fast services to customers. Lastly, the target market is price sensitive as it includes college and university students who are on budget. Therefore “pocket friendly price” phrase in the mission statement seeks to attract customers looking for cheaper priced snacks.

Trends in the industry

The fast food was largely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Fast food restaurants target to serve consumers while they are away from home. However, the pandemic changed the way people work. Majority of people started working from home while some schools were closed down. This significantly affected the fast-food restaurants significantly and this saw majority of them close down during the pandemic. Others opted to do home deliveries to remain in business as the number of people who could eat away from home reduced significantly. They established mobile takeout and delivery services so that customer can continue ordering food from the joints to potentially offset the declining revenues and also avoid closing down. However, the fast-food industry has begun to get back to its normalcy as the pandemic continues to slow down. Therefore, there will be increased demand for fast food services in the future because most of the fast-food restaurants closed down during the pandemic.

In addition, the rising household income levels have potential impact on fast food industry as it spurs a greater amount if spending on discretionary items. The more the people have money the more they are likely to purchase fast food restaurant products. Therefore, this is a big boost to the fast-food industry (IBIS World, 2021). Also, technology is significantly impacting the fast-food industry. Restaurants are leveraging technology, especially artificial intelligence and big data to understand consumer purchase behaviors so as they can offer products and services tailored to meet specific needs and preferences of consumers.

However, on the negative side of fast-food industry in the United States, there is increasing perception that fast-food restaurants are contributing to the increased rates of obesity among children (Mohammadbeigi, et al., 2018). Fast-food restaurants are associated with selling junk foods that contribute to overweight among children and adults. As result, this information has potential negative impact on the fast-food industry as consumers will be less likely to buy snacks because of the believe that snacks contribute to poor health among populations. Some of the fast-food restaurants offer high quality and health food to their consumers, however, because of this perception, they experience less sales.

Strategic positioning

Strategic positioning refers to the choices made by a business on the kind of value it will create and how differently it can create the value than its rivals (Harvard Business School, n.d.). Strategic positioning results into one of the two things; lower costs for the company or a premium price. A business can compete on low cost and at the same time achieve differentiation. Therefore, the business will create value through innovation and technology. Innovation plays a critical role in cutting down operation costs (Harvard Business School, n.d.). Through automation of services, the business will cut on human capital costs. For example, the business may implement a mobile app where customers can make orders while at home and come pick them as they had to work, this will reduce waiting time and increase efficiency. By cutting operating costs through automaton and technology, the business will be able to offer relatively low prices to consumers because of the reduced costs of operation. This will create value for the business by creating a competitive advantage for the business against its rivals.

SWOT analysis

Strengths

Brand image: One of the strengths of the business is that it will seek to create a reputable reputation by offering high quality services

Trained staff: The business will have trained staff to offer exceptional services to customers

Market knowledge: The business has substantial knowledge of the market needs and gaps and thus it will offer services and products that address these gaps

A wide variety menu: The restaurant will offer a broad range of food products to customers

Fast services: The restaurant will invest in technology and innovation to offer fast services.

Weakness

Financial resources: The business has limited resources to invest in the business and offer wide selection of services

New fast-food outlet: Since it is a new business, the restaurant will face a number of operational challenges including market penetration.

Opportunities

Technology; As the technology continues to evolve, the business will leverage new technologies to offer fast and quality services

Room for expansion: The business has the opportunity to expand to new locations within the city

Threats

Low prices by rivals; competitor businesses may offer low prices making customers shift to their businesses

Increased cost: Increased operational costs may make it hard for the business to operate.

Government regulations: The government may enact regulations that limit the operations of fast-food restaurants.

SWOT analysis matrix

Strengths Menu options market knowledge trained staff brand image fast services	Weakness Limited financial resources New fast-food outlet
Opportunities New technology and innovation Room for expansion	Threats low prices by rivals government regulations increased operational costs

References

IBIS World. (2021). Fast food restaurants industry in the US- Market research report. https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-research-reports/fast-food-restaurants- industry/

Mohammadbeigi, A., Asgarian, A., Moshir, E., Heidari, H., Afrashteh, S., Khazaei, S., & Ansari, H. (2018). Fast food consumption and overweight/obesity prevalence in students and its association with general and abdominal obesity. Journal of preventive medicine and hygiene, 59(3), E236.

Harvard Business School. (n.d.). Strategic positioning. https://www.isc.hbs.edu/strategy/business-strategy/Pages/strategic-positioning.aspx