SHOULD SEND ME ASAP

- tr|\" ,"''""'((tJrn't To: Mauna Loa Cafe Management

From: Greg Borgardt

Date: April 30,2013

Subject: Business Improvement Ideas

I appreciate you asking me to address the challenges you are facing and I believe I have come up with a few ideas to help improve the store operations at Mauna Loa Caf6. Based on the employee and customer surveys that you providd.mg l have three ideas that would be easy to develop and can be implemented at little cost. Establishing a standardized employee training program will help reduce employee turnover and improve service speeds, using social medial marketing is an easy way to get your message out to new customers, and updating your menu

will help improve your relationship with current customers.

As you know from your recent employee survey, over half of the staff commented that they o'needed better training, especially for new hires." To address this issue, I propose that you develop a standardized training program to be used for all training pu{poses, from new hires to district managers. Some of the benefits of a standardized plan would include increased

employee satisfaction, more consistent and faster service, and a professional development

program geared towards staff promotion. Also, in the unlikely event that a store becomes temporarily understaffed, employees from a nearby store would be able to fill in. The cost for such a plan would be moderate, and may take several months to develop, but in the long run

training costs would go down due to the reduction in employee turnover, and customer

satisfaction would go up as a result of the increase in service.

Secondly, I recommend you prepare a social media marketing plan. Utilizing this type of promotion can open your brand to many potential customers. By using Facebook, for instance,

limited time specials could be sent out to customers that follow your page. As these customers

click on the "Like" button on your site, that information is sent out to that follower's friend list, increasing your potential customer base. Other sites like Twitter, Linked-In and Yelp provide

similar brand exposure. These sites take liule time to set up, but they do require that they be constantly monitored and updated regularly. This could be easily managed by one or two people

in the marketing department at little additional cost.

Finally, the customer survey revealed that almost 60%o of the respondents suggested that the food menu be updated. With many people looking to "eat healthy," some thought should be given to moving away from pastries and towards other choices such as fruits, whole grain muffins and

breakfast cereals. For instance, there has been a trend in the apple market to provide a larger

variety such as *Lady Alice", "Pink Lady" and "Pacific Rose" apples. By taking advantage of this trend, you could provide a better quality product to your customers and not have to wotry

about product going stale by the end of the day. Also, based on some preliminary research, the

gross profit on fruit is higher that the pastries. Adding fruit to the menu would be an excellent way to boost customer satisfaction.

As you can see, these three ideas are relatively easy to implement and the payback on them could potentially be significant. Employee training will help reduce staff turnover and improve service times, social media marketing will get your message out to more customers, and an updated menu will help boost customer satisfaction. I hope you will give these ideas serious consideration and will be glad to answer any questions you may have. Remember, you're selling more than just a cup of coffee.