Modernizing the Broadway Cafe: customer relationships and strategy

¶ … Cafe

Since 1952, the restaurant and food retailing business has gone through massive change, yet the one constant continues to be customer loyalty and trust. The Broadway Cafe has firmly established itself as a trusted provider of food and a unique dining experience. Customers have no doubt tolerated occasional errors in orders due to the manual systems, the fact that the Cafe runs out of the most popular entrees ingredients, and the lack of 21st century technologies including free WiFi access. Yet despite these limitations that many customers must perceive as quaint, there is the more concerning aspect of their customer base aging, in some cases passing away, and an entirely new generation of customers with higher levels of expectations being critical to the financial viability of the Cafe. The intent of this analysis is to make a series of recommendations from a customer relationship, marketing, and supply chain and purchasing standpoint.

Customer Relationships

Regis McKenna, noted marketing expert, author and founder of several high tech companies, has often remarked that customers' perceptions and expectations need to be a company's reality if it is to grow (McKenna, 1995). Seth Godin has also made these observations as well. In the food retailing business, trust leads to customer loyalty, which eventually translates into restaurants and food establishments becoming part of a customers' routine. With the new generation of customers who have much higher expectations of free Wifi, participation of the Broadway Cafe on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, and websites that promote specials and provide coupons, the existing strategies are beginning to look archaic. The offer of free Wifi is seen as exceptionally valuable, as more high-end hotels charge $10 or more a day to just access the Internet; it is seen as a strong service differentiator by customers below 40 years of age (Brus, 2005).

In addition to Wifi access, participation on Facebook and Twitter, and websites promoting specials, there is also the fundamental need on the part of the Broadway Cafe to listen more closely to what customers are saying. Social networks are excellent platform for listening to and interacting with customers (Bernoff, Li, 2008). In fact the merging area of social CRM is critical for staying connected with the next generation of customers for The Broadway Cafe. There is also a major change happening with the expectations of the next generation of customers, and capturing this through CRM systems is critically important. The use of salesforce.com is recommended as this is an entirely Web-based application that can scale to meet the Cafe's unique needs. In conclusion on customer relationships, the Cafe cannot lose the trust of customers or their relevancy to them. Concentrating on these areas will help attract customers from this generation.

Marketing

Customers choose how they want to learn about and interact with businesses. While the last 50+ years of the Cafe has been more driven by personal relationships, the current generation chooses to use the Web and social networks. Marketing as a result must embrace digital content strategies and delivery coupons regularly to clients over Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. It must also seek to create mailing lists that can be managed through hosted platforms including Constant Contact. In short, the Cafe must redefine its marketing strategies to reflect how its customers want to learn and evaluate the Cafe. The total experience of the Cafe needs to be evaluated from the context of enhancing the customers' valuation of it; not staying stuck in the past and coasting on quaintness and customer loyalty.

Conclusion

Attaining the level of trust with this generation of customers is highly dependent on staying relevant to their needs. Accentuating the experience of eating at the Cafe, making it convenient to stay connected to the Web, and using social networking sites to learn about specials all matter to this generation of customers. By intelligently pursuing technology to strength the customer experience, the Cafe can profitably and productively make the transition to the 21st century.