Marketing of Service †Restaurant Chain Essay

With the rise in disposable income, dining outside has become a staple part of the modern world. This has been a phenomenon of most of the cities across the continent. The beautiful and pristine continent of Africa is no exception with the spurt of the cities and the settlements from the outside countries. An interesting cradle of development in the continent is the country of South Africa. As the standard of living of most South Africans has risen over the last decade, eating out has become a popular leisure activity. According to Statistics South Africa, restaurants and coffee shops are steadily growing their businesses year on year. Take-away also did well, with businesses growing at an annual rate of around 15%. These increases were in spite of rising interest rates. In recent years, this market has grown and more restaurants have opened – offering a wide variety and an improving quality of food. So, while the market offers plenty of opportunity for a small business, it also demands quality and preferably a special or different offering. We, at Golden Restaurants , in our explorations to roll out across the seas , couldn’t help overlook this burgeoning market. Hence, going ahead with our vision of taking our Flagship Restaurant Brand ‘The Golden Bowl’ to the International Market, we have thought of setting our eyes on the Africa’s , the beautiful South Africa to begin with . Being in the Indian Restaurant Market for quite sometime and having burnt our kitchens to serve clients from different classes , particularly , the rich and the creamy , we would like to conjure our expertise in positioning ourselves as a class apart and an amphitheatre for the Rich and the Super Rich Indian South Africans . This document provides a peek into the South African Indian Market and our strategy to market and promote the experience of Dining in a different way to the Rich Indian populace. Introduction Setting up a restaurant means first deciding what type of food to serve. South Africa has plenty of ‘traditional’ dishes of its own, and has long been a fertile market for cuisines from India, Italy, Greece, France, China and Japan. This exposure has grown in the last decade, and will continue as the country has become home to thousands from other African countries. Knowing our expertise in the Indian Cuisines, we plan to target High-earning individuals or families of the large Indian Diaspora with plenty of disposable income but not much time as well as dual-income family groups and the Flux of Indian Tourists to the country. Though there are a sizeable number of Indian Restaurants, around 40, located in the Indian strongholds like Durban, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria catering to the different strata of the diaspora, we intend to focus ourselves on the niche rich segment and provide an enriching experience with differentiated Service Value Addition. We plan to start with Johannesburg, as our strategic location , it being a hotspot of Indian settlement and also one of the wealtiest cities of the country . We would like to offer our guests a dining experience like no other. A unique, interactive dining experience creating memorable moments with family and friends or the corporate honchos. From the time the first piece of bread is dipped and the last piece of dessert is savored, you’ll be graced with the time to discover new things about people you thought you knew. And, those you’re getting to know. The emphasis would be on the first impressions and the power of contrast, simplified but exhaustive dining, an engagement of the senses and a choreographed ambience. The pick of the cuisines of the four corners of India would be on offer and the Indian exotic feel would be the main forte. Indian Diaspora in South Africa The history of the Indian diaspora in South Africa is a fascinating saga of almost a hundred & forty years. Indian South Africans are people of Indian descent living in South Africa and mostly live in and around the city of Durban, making it ‘the largest ‘Indian’ city outside India’. Many Indians in South Africa are descendents of migrants from colonial India (South Asia) during late 19th-century through early 20th-century. At other times Indians were subsumed in the broader geographical category â€Å"Asians†, including persons originating in present-day Iran and parts of the small Chinese community. The modern South African Indian community is largely descended from Indians who arrived in South Africa from 1860 onwards. The first 342 of these came on board the Truro from Madras, followed by the Belvedere from Calcutta. They were transported as ndentured laborers to work on the sugarcane plantations of Natal Colony, and, in total, approximately 150,000 Indians arrived as indentured laborers over a period of 5 decades, later also as indentured coal miners and railway construction workers. The indentured laborers tended to speak Tamil, Telugu and Hindi, and the majority were Hindu with Christians and Muslims among them. The remaining Indian immigration was from passenger Indians, comprising traders, and others who migrated to South Africa shortly after the indentured labourers, paid for their own fares and travelled as British Subjects. These immigrant Indians who became traders were from varying religious backgrounds, some being Hindu and some being Muslims from Gujarat (including Memons and Surtis), later joined by Kokanis, and Urdu speakers from Uttar Pradesh. . There was also a significant number of Gujarati Hindus in this group. Indian traders were sometimes referred to as â€Å"Arab traders† because of their dress, as large numbers of them were Muslim. Passenger Indians, who initially operated in Durban, expanded inland, to the South African Republic (Transvaal), establishing communities in settlements on the main road between Johannesburg and Durban. Natal’s Indian traders rapidly displaced small white shop owners in trade with other Indians, and with black Africans, causing resentment among white businesses. | Population, Regional & Linguistic Distribution The South African Indian origin community currently numbers around 1. 15 million and constitutes about 2. 5% of South Africa’s total population of 45. 45 million. About 80% of the Indian community lives in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, about 15% in the Gauteng (previously Transvaal) area and the remaining 5% in the Cape Town area. In KwaZulu-Natal, the major concentration of the Indian population is in Durban. The largest concentrations of Indian settlement are at Chatsworth, Phoenix, Tongaat and Stanger in the Durban Coastal area, which covers approximately 500,000 of the Indian origin community. Pietermaritzburg – noted for its link with Mahatma Gandhi – has a community of approximately 200,000. Smaller inland towns in KwaZulu Natal such as Ladysmith, Newcastle, Dundee and Glencoe make up the bulk of the remaining Indian population. In the Gauteng area, the Indian community is largely concentrated around Lenasia outside Johannesburg and Laudium and other suburbs outside Pretoria. There are also smaller groups in towns in the Eastern Cape and other provinces. Settlement of Indian origin people in a particular area, as with other South African peoples, came about as a result of the Group Areas Act that forced racial division into particular designated areas. According to the figures provided by the Department of Education and Culture, in the Province of KwaZulu-Natal, the linguistic break-up of the Indian community is as follows: Tamil 51%, Hindi 30%, Gujarati 7%, Telugu 6%, Urdu 5% and others 1%. Starting a restaurant in South Africa Product is a key element in the overall market offering. Marketing-mix planning begins with formulating an offering that brings value to target customers. This offering becomes the basis upon which the company builds profitable relationships with customers. A company’s market offering often includes both tangible goods and services. Each component can be a minor or a major part of the total offer. At one extreme, the offer may consist of a pure tangible good, such as soap. Toothpaste, or salt—no services accompanying the product. At the other extreme are pure services, for which the offer consists primarily of a service. Examples include a doctor’s exam or financial services. Between these two extremes, however, many goods-and-services combinations are possible, the best examples is â€Å"Restaurant†. A restaurant is an ideal case of a product meets services story and the success of the greater concept as a whole depends on the combined successes or excellence of the entire gamut of offerings right from the food served to the services rendered to the ambience offered. We are not just offering our core Product with an elite Service but we blend it with a rich dining experience, one that would linger on for quite sometime. Now that we have identified the country, learnt about the population and have good statistical information which support the opening of an Indian Restaurant in South Africa, let’s put on the Thinking Hat and do some Brainstorming like a marketers. We have the vast South African Market which is more or less a mixed kind of market with heterogeneous culture. So, at first we need to identify our target market and position our pro-ser-exp (product served in a unique manner to give an experience of lifetime) by the process of S. T. P (i. e. Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning)