Marketing Mix

Marketing Mix

The products, the Escoffier sell consist of food and beverages, but a customer also pays for the service the restaurant offers. The quality of these is the main reason customers visit the restaurant.
A price of 20 pound for a five course menu is attractive for customers especially if you consider the value of the ingredients. Even with all the budget cuts the price for food is still the same as always, but the portion size was decreased.
It's easy to find and access with the public transportation system due to it's position near the city center. This is also reason for customers to visit the restaurant. A big constraint, that maybe scares some potential customers away, is the fact, that there's no possible parking space at dinnertime.
The Escoffier offers special offers like the attractive Christmas menu. They also face a lot of competition from other restaurants, especially college ones. 

PEST and SWOT analysis

PEST and SWOT analysis

Political: The Escoffier has only a very limited budget. That means it can't afford things like proper decoration and has to limit their portion size. Furthermore The appetizer has completely disappeared from the menu and the coffee is extra now.
The Restaurant relies heavily on government funding, which means it gets funded and can therefore afford additional equipment, but has to give all the money they make back to it's source
The Escoffier is classified as a training restaurants, so the staff isn't paid, which saves a lot of money. Also it encourages visitors to eat there to support the education of the students. It also has a negative aspect: Students make a lot of mistakes than real staff. But since the Escoffier is a exceptional training restaurant, which even earned a AA rosette, the students have a real high standard of service.
Economic:
Like every restaurant the Escoffier faces a lot of competitors, but it still receives enough customers. The reason for this is that now after the recession of the last years is over, more and more people have enough money to dine in restaurants even on regular workdays. The restaurant also has access to regional specialties, like blue Vinnie or black cow vodka, which it gets for a fair amount of money. And since the Escoffier only employs training staff, they don't need to pay them, which is a big positive factor, considering how much money other restaurants loose, because of the current job market situation.
Social: The Escoffier doesn't invest in a lot of marketing, but all the student's who recommend the business make up for it. If every student recommends the business a lot of the families will actually go there at least once. Like I already wrote before, it is a new trend for customers to go dining on weekdays, not only on the weekend. And since the Escoffier offers good food for their price, the customers will prefer it over more expensive alternatives.
Technological: In the last few years the Escoffier like many other restaurants renewed their equipment and brought it on a modern level. Now they're as fast and efficient as every other competitor.
But because of all these machines the electricity bills are enormous. The same applies for gas and water.
The restaurant is also very easy to reach. This is because of the improvements in transportation technology in the last few years.


The strengths of the Escoffier are it's position in a big city with hundreds of potential customers and target markets, the fact that they're a government funded training restaurant and therefor doesn't have to pay students while it gets money by the government and attracts customers, who want to help the education.
The weaknesses are the budget cuts the college puts on them, the fact that students are more likely to make mistakes than employees and the horrendous parking situation.
The opportunities of the Escoffier include the expansion into another target market, or another part of the city by opening a second restaurant. But first they need an opportunity to solve the parking problem.
Possible threats for the Escoffier consists of other training restaurants and the fact that the government could take away their financial support. Furthermore there is always the risk of loosing customers. It mostly caused by the ridiculously small portion size.

Style of questionnaire and reflection

Style of questionnaire and reflection


We choose the questions very carefully after minutes of thinking.
To ask the customers for their first name was John idea. He wanted to get to know the respondents better. Question number 2 was my idea. I thought it was a good idea to ask this, since we would learn about the distance potential customers are ready to travel to get to the restaurant. Sadly the first two questions weren't answered often - almost never - so maybe we shouldn't have included them.

Question number three had the purpose to get a grasp of the Escoffier customer's demographics, to learn about possibilities to expand the target market. Strangely 80% of answers to that questions came from people below 21.
Questions four and five are the most interesting. We chose them because we wanted to know about the popularity of the restaurant, and how customers would rate it.

We only used closed questions since they're a lot easier to answer. In my opinion our survey would have been less successful if we used open questions, since the people who take part in surveys want to finish them quick. We didn't push the participants to an answer by always giving them multiple choices.



We received a lot of valuable information for questions 3-5, but not for 1 and 2, which isn't tragic, since they weren't relevant at all. Over all the survey still wasn't successful. This is because of the low number of answers we received. The number of participants could have been greater, if we shared it both on Facebook.

The questions were as straightforward as possible. Only at question four there was a little bit confusing: "Have you heard about the Escoffier? If yes, how would you rate it?" In the moment we wrote it, the purpose of the question seemed obvious, but later I realized we accidently asked two questions in one. We should have corrected it, but no one seemed to be confused by it, so we didn't make any changes.

Market research results

We received 10 answers in total. 8 of them were people our age, maybe students at the college as well, two were older.

Half of the respondents visited the Escoffier before, the other half not. We asked the five people who actually went there about how they would rate the restaurant. 80% of them said the food is brilliant only one person answered with good.

The five people who have never been to the Escoffier all knew what type of Restaurant it is.

My questionaire

My questionnaire
(by John and Leander)

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/673THDW

Definitions

Definitions

Market research:The process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a market, about a product or service to be offered for sale in that market, and about the past, present and potential customers for the product or service; research into the characteristics, spending habits, location and needs of your business's target market, the industry as a whole, and the particular competitors you face

~Entrepreneur.com

Primary and secondary research:Primary research is new research, carried out to answer specific issues or questions. It can involve questionnaires, surveys or interviews with individuals or small groups.

Secondary research makes use of information previously researched for other purposes and publicly available. This is also known as 'desk research'. Secondary research includes published research reports in a library, surveys or the Internet.