MARKETING ASSIGNMENT:
TACO BELL COMPANY
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Company Profile
Taco Bell is a Food and Beverage Company, dealing especially with fast foods, which was found in USA, and its headquarters based in Irvine, California. The firm offers a variety of Tex-Mex foods; among them are tacos, burritos, quesadillas, nachos, specialty items and a variety of “value menu” items. Generally, the company boast of more than two billion customers each year in more than 6,500 outlets mostly in the U.S. more than 80 percent of these restaurants are owned and operated by independent franchisees.
Positioning Services
The company first began its operations in Canada in the year 1981, with Windsor Ontario as the first store. Taco Bell (Canada) is owned by Priszm. In its stores, Taco Bell offers free soda refills. Currently, Taco Bell is located in seven of the ten Canadian provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The ad office is based in Ontario. According to official statistics as at December 27th, 2014, there are 29 outlets of Taco Bell in Canada: 28 franchisees and one license. Revenue increased by nine percent as a result of new sites and a six percent from established stores, as per the first quarter of the year 2015.
Designing and Managing the Service Process
There are recent developments that have impacted greatly on profitability of companies in food and beverage industry. First is the social media, and advancement in technology. Initially, restaurants have been using their websites to pass important updates to their customers. However, with the development of tablets, iphones and other smart phones, companies are finding it necessary to create an application that can be downloaded in these mobile devises to offer important communication with regard to what is being offered by the restaurant. Besides, these applications, like that of Taco Bell, offers a social platform where different customers can drop their comments, complaints and get instant feedback for issues they need to be addressed by management of the restaurant DiPietro, R. B. et al, 2010). As such, firms are adopting this trend in order to not only increase the market base, but also offer unique services as well as stay ahead competitors.
The other trend in fast food and beverage industry is the high attention for food safety and innovation. Fast food can be the most innovative sector of food industry. However, the innovation must pay attention to food safety. Dealing with food requires a very cautious handling, with high attention to food poisoning and any form of non-hygienic conditions being avoided at all costs. This is because, no matter how little it may be, any case of unhygienic food and beverage can lead to serious losses not only due to litigation, but also due to loss of market and goodwill, as well as negative brand name. Additionally, due to high demand for fast food, it may occasion for restaurants to speed up production of the raw materials used to make these dishes. This has prompted into using GMO products (Dundes & Swann, 2008). Consequently, some restaurants, like Taco Bell have lost goodwill among their customers due to the availability of E.Coli bacteria that led to some of the customers being hospitalized (Dundes & Swann, 2008). In an effort to address these trends, Taco Bell has created an application, with over 2billon people downloading it. The company’s robust advertisement has also ensured that it succeeds in implementing its strategies (DiPietro, R. B. et al, 2011). Taco Bell has also prioritized hygiene, innovation and high quality customer service, ensuring it does not slump again to the intoxication of their products. Highly trained medical and clinical officers are employed to supervise the production and ensure the products are at the highest level of hygiene (Dundes & Swann, 2008).
According to the official census results of 2011 published on the official website of Canada, on statistics segment, a majority of Canadians is made of people between 15 years and 60 years. This makes Canada’s population the youngest among the G8 countries (Fortin, N et al, 2012). Taco Bell products are produced to target the children and the youth in both middle and upper class. As such, the majority of Canadians offer a potential market for Taco Bell products. Besides, more than 90 percent of Canadians aged between 15 years and over receive income, predominantly from private sources, whereas 70 percent receive income from government transfers. This makes Canada the country with majority of the population getting regular income. And hence most of them can afford to buy. And since the majority of these people are busy, there are high chances of them taking take-away, eating from restaurants, taking their families out during weekends, and loving fun (DiPietro, R. B. et all, 2011). Thus Taco Bell is able to capitalize on this by offering customized products and services to its customers.
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On this position map, I used a scale of 1 to five where 1 represents a very high standard of hygiene of food and quick service while 5 represents a low standard of hygienic food and quick service. Similarly, a scale of one represents high degree of variety of products whereas a scale of 5 represents a low degree of variety of products. Attributes used for my map are hygiene and variability.
Hygiene is the practice that is aimed at preventing pathogens. It is practicing and doing what promotes the health of the people and the community at large (Jin & Leslie, 2009). On the other hand, variability is the degree by which one product may differ from another. It may be in form of size, quality, composition, price, packaging, etc. These two components are the drivers of successful fast food firms in the world.
Taco Bell is well position as illustrated by the map. It offers highly hygienic food and quick service, as well as products of high variability. As such, it is a one-stop shop for fast food. The recent introduction of breakfast for the customers, Taco Bells has increased its market share through this new product line.
Two fail points that Taco Bells has experienced is difficulties in franchise management, and provision of high fat and high calorie food that is not good for health conscious people. According to official statistics, most of the outlets or restaurants that offer products of Taco Bell are franchises. It has hence become hard to manage them since they are completely separate business from the parent firm. To rectify this, Taco Bells should consider buying stakes in those franchises to have a say of how businesses are carried out. Moreover, they should open branches that are operated by the company, as well as encourage more licensees.
The high fat and calorie foods may pose a hazard to unhealthy persons. It can lead to heart attach, obesity and other health related problems (Dundes & Swann, 2008). Therefore, the firm should clearly label all those products whose fat and calorie is high as advised by the doctors to make consumers aware of the contents of what they are consuming.in order to retain health conscious customers, the company should offer alternative products that suits their health conditions. It should introduce new flavors and new recipes specially focused on health friendly ingredients.
Being a dealer in fast food sector, Taco Bell has wait points. First is the ordering for supplies, and the second one is the special recipes offered to customers. in the cae of ordering for supplies, Taco Bells handles very perishable products. Hence ordering in bulk can lead to some huge losses. As such, the best practice is estimating daily demand and ordering for supplies that can meet the projected daily demand. However, in some cases, the demand may overwhelm the supplies, prompting to delays as a result of emergency orders for supplies. The company is therefore advised to monitor consumer trends, as well as locate its plants as closer as possible to the suppliers.
The other wait is the transition from making a special recipe by a customer, to delivering the recipe. It takes some time for special recipes that suits customer specifications to be delivered. To avoid long wait, the firm should engage the customer during the waiting period, as well as have the latest technologies that can minimize the time it tales to deliver such orders. The customer can be offered free drinks as they wait for their recipe, if teenagers be involved in video games, or any other service that will shorten the wait.
REFERENCES
- Jin, G. Z., & Leslie, P. (2009). Reputational incentives for restaurant hygiene. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 1(1), 237-267.
- DiPietro, R. B., Parsa, H. G., & Gregory, A. (2011). Restaurant QSC inspections and financial performance: an empirical investigation. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 23(7), 982-999.
- Dundes, L., & Swann, T. (2008). Food safety in fast food restaurants. Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism, 7(2), 153-161.
- Fortin, N., Green, D. A., Lemieux, T., Milligan, K., & Riddell, W. C. (2012). Canadian inequality: recent developments and policy options. Canadian Public Policy, 38(2), 121-145.
