marketing plan T

Waste to Want Marketing Plan

Read the following work. Condense your Goals and Strategy discussion into two-page double space section that addresses your marketing goals and objectives, your target market, and your value proposition.

As a team we have come up with two primary marketing goals for our sustainability opportunity called Waste to Want. Our first primary goal is to decrease individual restaurant waste by year three. This would require us to recruit six monetary donors within the first six months of starting the venture. While finding the monetary donors we would also need to start searching for restaurant donors as well who would provide the leftover food to us so that we can then create meals out of it. We would need to acquire twelve restaurant donors within our first year of operation. After getting the business up and running, we plan to collect 1,500 pounds of food from these restaurants every week. This amount was chosen because after doing some research, we discovered that the average person consumes about one pound of food per meal. This amount of food collected weekly will help to reduce food waste.

The second primary goal of Waste to Want is to provide 1,000 meals per week to low income areas. With this goal we would need to start out by selecting places to serve our food that can hold 200-250 people at a time such as school cafeterias or churches. We would then need to donate to ten of these locations within our first year of operation. After getting everything up and running we would then hopefully be able to supply these locations with food three days a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday). This will allow us to have time to collect and deliver the meals to these specific locations each week in a timely manner.

The target market we have selected for Waste to Want is mainly lower income areas and homeless shelters; those who are not fortunate enough to purchase their own meals. This will be perfect for our specific target market because we are aiming to provide fulfilling, healthy meals to those who need them and cannot provide for themselves. We are aiming to collaborate with restaurants in local areas that were going to throw away food that was cooked but never ate and provide that to our customers. As far as competitors go, we really do not have any competitors because we are a non-profit organization. If we did not accept donations and we aimed to be a for-profit organization then we would in a sense have competitors. The term competitors is still lightly used in this type of organization because of the type of work that we do is something that is doing good for others so there is not a need to call it competitors. So all in all for our target we are aiming for areas with a lower income that cannot afford meals or homeless shelters to provide to even more of those who need the help.

Waste to Want’s value proposition is, “Picking Up You and Your Food”. This statement puts the customer first and foremost which is a key component to grabbing consumer’s attention. The phrase, “picking up” is used in two ways in this statement. The first being a moral pick me up to the consumer, we want to make the customer feel better by providing them with a quality meal. The second meaning is a nod to the actual action of the service which is collecting, or picking up, leftover food from restaurants.

Our target customers are low-income households, whether it be one or multiple people, located in food insecure areas. These areas will have the most people in need of the service we are offering because they do not have either the access or the resources (i.e. money, transportation) to obtain a quality meal. The frame of reference for our service is the food bank concept. Most food banks provide food but people have to come to them. Our service “picks up” and delivers which adds new value to customers. We believe our concept of “picking up” will add value not found anywhere else in order to draw more customers in and to differentiate ourselves. This is why our value proposition of, “Picking Up You and Your Food” is the best way to represent our sustainable opportunity by highlighting what we do while highlighting that the service is all about the customer.

Waste to Want is a non-profit organization involved in the community food services industry. We strive to lower the amount of food waste and to avoid hunger, specifically in Erie Pennsylvania. Three days a week, our team will visit and collect leftover food that would otherwise be wasted from our partner restaurants; collecting from a different partner each day. We will then take the food to one of our three locations in the food insecure and low income areas throughout Erie PA (locations would be churches, homeless shelters, school cafeterias or gymnasiums). We will then turn this left over food supply into a meal for people who are struggling to provide an adequate dinner for themselves and their families. We will provide meals three days a week (Saturdays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays) at 5 o’clock PM, each day will be at a different location. This will allow us to reach a large amount of the community. Waste to Want focuses not only on helping the community out by providing them with nutritious meals, but also wants to help put back a sense of hope into their lives. We want these communities to know we are there for them and that they can count on us.

In this venture, it is vital to get the product to the right audience, at the right time and in a form that will appeal to them. In achieving the first objective, there arises the need to provide incentives to monetary as well as restaurant donors. In this scenario, offering incentives to the potential donors is the best way to seek their support. For the restaurants, we will be reducing their food waste considerably which could go a long way in cutting their costs and promoting sustainability. The monetary donors will be gratified if they learn that they are contributing to a cause that seeks to help the disadvantaged in the society.

The other phase of development focuses on establishing a network that will turn the foods from the restaurants into quality meals for people, especially in low-income areas. Since this is a non-profit movement, using strategic places to present the meals will allow for faster and better publicity. The only cost incurred by the people accessing the meals will be the time they will take in getting the meal which is zero. There will be zero cost to the consumer and we hope to keep costs down on our end as well.

Communication will be key for our service because it will help get our name out there and show people the work we can do. It will be especially good because we will not have the ability to market our product in commercials or any large type of advertisements such as billboards or anything along those lines. We can also use communication so that we can reach out to those who would be the ones donating to us to help fund our service, and we would also need to communicate with the people in charge of the venues that we would be using to provide the meals. Another means of communication would be getting our name out to those who we planned on delivering the meals to. We would need to go to the food insecure areas and let the people know what our plans are so that they can come to where we will be serving them.

Distribution will first require the trucks going to get the food that is prepared and ready to be served. After that the trucks will have to deliver the food to the different venues that we will be serving the meals at. We would have to determine if we would hire truck drivers to drive from location to location to pick up and deliver the food, or if we would take it upon ourselves to do it. The upside to us doing it ourselves at the start would be that it would be a money saver so we did not have to pay anyone to do the work for us.

The TEN Dimensions consist of transparency, engagement and networking. Waste to Want hopes to take these characteristics into practice in order to create an honest and hardworking company. In order to enact transparency, Waste to Want will share donor information with those we serve so that they know where the food comes from as well as the ingredients in it. It will also be important to share the process we go through in order to obtain the food so that people understand that the food is safe to consume. Another way to use transparence would be to share information with our donors whether they be restaurant donors or strictly monetary donors. Our partners would feel more comfortable knowing where and how their money and/or food is being used.

The second dimension of engagement can be reached through having volunteers help with the pickup and distribution process. By involving community members to help ours, we increase engagement between ourselves and our customers but we also create engagement between the community itself. Engagement must be voluntary, personal and viral. The company name could spread virally through word of mouth which would also increase the level of engagement between us and our market. Creating events, other than just distributing food, at our centralized locations could enhance engagement more than just providing a meal.

The final dimension of TEN is networking. Networking may be the most important concept for our non-profit organization. In order to attract both restaurant and financial donors, Waste to Want should be networking in the target area. Attending other events being held in Erie would be the perfect opportunity to introduce the concept to people potentially interested in the idea. From your donor connections, those associates could spread the idea to others and the network grows and grows. Eventually partnerships and more meals could come from more connections.