Communication management plan for Life Alive cafe expansion

Communication Management Plan

Life Alive

Life Alive was founded by Heidi Feinstein, a natural health consultant with the aim of promoting the importance of organic produce, eating fresh, and whole grains. The goal of the manager for the cafe is expansion to meet its mission of feeding vitality to the world by serving food prepared and grown locally, served and stored with zero waste to energy. This is to achieve energy efficiency in an ecological manner for the local community. Life Alive is a cafe founded on the value of providing delicious means, simple and nutritious meals to nurture the soul and body, for the family and community. The cafe target market is the individual and family including the vegetarian, vegan, omnivore, macrobiotic, raw, and gluten free client. The goal of the business to have customers leave the cafe feeling satisfied, delighted, energized, confident, connected, strong, and ready for anything.

Life Alive cafe tries to promote key values to its employees and customers. These include the creation of empowerment; by creating space for people can be inspired, motivated, transformed, and outspoken. The second value is quality, involving achieving professionalism and heart-centered mindfulness in everything the cafe does to respond to the needs of coworkers and customers. Integrity is achieved by adopting practices like consistency and honesty in all interactions, and being aware of the effects of the Life Alive's actions. Life Alive also strives to adopt values of equity, passion, compassion, and joyfulness in its organizational structure.

Life Alive organizational structure is composed of central leadership of Heidi Feinstein, the founder and chief executive officer. The CEO manages three Life Alive cafes in Cambridge, Lowell, and Salem, each with a team headed by a manager. Brett Fermeglia manages the Cambridge team composed of Rory Dillon and Andrew Johanson. Jessica MacDonald, who is also the cafe's shift leader, manages the Lowell team. Life Alive cafe seeks to offer consumers the best and fresh produce locally produced by collaborating with suppliers and allowing investors to take part in the business venture. The CEO has a vision of expanding the store to meet the demand for fresh, organic, and local produce, and build collaboration of educational institutions and small restaurants. To meet the mission and vision of the cafe, a marketing communication plan is developed targeting a five-year expansion period.

Marketing Communication Management Plan

1. Purpose and Scope of the Communication Plan

The purpose of this report is to describe the communication strategies and goals of Life Alive. The intension of the goals and strategies is to offer guidance in the planning and measurement of the outcomes of the current and future communication efforts of the cafe. The Life Alive communication management plan will define the methods of information collection and structure, the formatting, screening, and distribution of information. It also creates an understanding between Life Alive teams (Lowell, Salem, and Cambridge), regarding the processes and actions required in facilitating the critical links between stakeholders, ideas, and information for the expansion success.

The objective of this communication management plan is to promote the success of the expansion project by meeting the information needs of the cafe's stakeholders. It also outlines the aims of the communication effort to inform and reach each team or group. It also identifies the material resources and organizational policies needed to be carried out to coordinate and secure resources. Lastly, it also outlines the appropriate level of communication of each stakeholder (management, cafe teams, customers, investors, and suppliers) on the information to be distributed and the frequency of their communication. The plan also outlines the vehicles of communication involving emails, face-to-face meetings. The intended audience for the communication management plan is the CEO, the Lowell, Cambridge, and Salem teams, investors, and suppliers.

2. Stakeholder Identification and Analysis

2.1 Stakeholders and Goals

The main tool for promoting the expansion plan for Life Alive is marketing communication, identified to promote participation, cooperation, understanding of acceptance, and coordination between stakeholders. There are four main stakeholder groups with specific communication goals.

Stakeholder group 1: customers including interested members of the public concerned with fresh, healthy, organic, and local produce. These are consumers interested in consuming wholesome food and products that are great tasting. They are consumers aware of the role fresh produce and food plays in achieving health for their families and communities. This stakeholder group is important for it creates the market base for the case, and should be included in the communication plan.

Goals:

a. Inform consumers of the benefits of buying food and fresh produce from Life Alive,

b. Provide consumers with education that encourages health, sensual, and well-being through products sold by the cafe.

c. Promote among consumers the importance, benefits of locally, and organically grown foods, free from artificial preservatives and chemicals, flavors, sweeteners, and colors.

Objectives:

a. Promote the Life Alive expansion project by promoting participation of current consumer base in the marketing campaign.

b. Leverage the consumer group as advocates for support and understanding of the importance of Life Alive in achieving health and well-being in the community.

Stakeholder Group 2: These include all investors and partners, who are aware and understand the demand for more Life Alive cafes. These are stakeholders of the cafe that understand the changes in food supply created by global food and energy system. They also include investors how have collaborated and invested in Life Alive in terms of finances, goods, technology, volunteers, and skilled services.

Goals:

a. Inform and gather commitment from investors to participate and support the Life Alive expansion project,

b. Support investors may achieve the full benefits of their investment in key business processes of Life Alive.

Objectives:

a. Have investors participate in the Life Alive expansion project by the financial year 2013, 15th May, with necessary resources, policies, and program management to support their collaboration and participation,

b. Create communication materials, messages, and activities to respond to the needs of investors,

c. Evaluate the expansion project communication plan by measuring the satisfaction level of consumers, and communicating this information to investors.

d. Report the progress of the planning and implementation to investors,

e. Leverage investors as advocates and providers of strategic direction for the expansion process.

Stakeholder Group 3: This includes all employees working in the current three Life Alive cafes in Cambridge, Lowell, and Salem. Their support and participation in the expansion program is necessary since they implement and assist in developing policies and decisions. They are also in direct interaction with consumers, carry out business processes, and implement the expansion plan.

Goals:

a. Inform employees on the organization required in the expansion program, its scope, and progress during the implementation phase,

b. Create coordination and participation by informing employees in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the expansion plan.

Objectives:

a. Create a sense of urgency among employees on the implementation and development of the marketing expansion plans,

b. Report the progress of the planning and implementation phases to the employees.

c. Leverage employees as providers of Life Alive cafe's strategic direction in the expansion program.

Stakeholder group 4: this is the project team involving the CEO of Life Alive, managers of the three cafes in Cambridge, Lowell, and Salem, representatives from the investors group, legal and financial advisors of the cafe.

Stakeholder Group

Contact

Communications

Vehicle

Comments

Heidi Feinstein

Founder and CEO

Stakeholder group 4: Project Team

Heidi.

Status Reports and Internal Project Status Meeting

Telephone, Email

Brett Fermerglia

Operations Manager

Stakeholder group 4: Project Team

Brett.

Internal meetings, memos, and reports

Telephone, email, face-to-face

Andrew Johanson

Employee

Stakeholder group 3: employees

Andrew.

Meetings and memos

Business letters, face-to-face, email

Rory Dillon

Employee

Stakeholder group 3: employees

Meetings and memos

Business letters, face-to-face, email

Jessica McDonald

Shift leader & triumphant trainer

Stakeholder group 4: project team management

Status Reports and Internal Project Status Meeting

Telephone, email, face-to-face

3. Communication Vehicles

Marketing Communication Initiatives April 2013-May 2018

These initiatives are directly meant to maintain the cafe, and will receive priority in the planning and implementation of the communications and marketing of the business to be accomplished in 2013-2018 fiscal years.

1. National and regional recognition initiatives: these are to coordinate survey reports, media placements, and publication distributions to position Life Alive in the national and regional stage.

2. Consumer communication initiatives: these are to coordinate and assist efforts in the cafe's consumer management section to communicate with prospective consumers, and enhance communication with current consumers.

3. Internal communication initiative: this is to offer a comprehensive information on the cafe to various parts consumers, investors, and employees.

4. Community service initiative: this is to demonstrate to the local community the ability of Life Alive to provide local supplies of fresh and healthy food and produce collaborative efforts and commitment to creating a healthy community.

5. Identity and branding initiative: create advocacy in the regional, local, and state community the identity of Life Alive by coordinating the name, logo, seal, images, languages, and other graphics associated with Life Alive and healthy living.

6. Diversity initiative: offer leadership in publicizing and promoting Life Alive commitment to diversity in the workplace.

These initiatives are geared towards meeting of challenges are like changes in consumer trends, competition from new entrants, technology developments, economic and political issues. To create a strategy that will address this, the goal is to use an integrative approach that is technology, competitor, consumer, and market driven. This is because, consumer trends indicate that the company creates healthy and fresh products that will compete with emerging organic and fresh produce shops. At the same time, take advantage in the increase in consumer purchasing power. The strategy also adopts market trends where organic companies expand their markets using multimedia, social media and internationalization via exporting.

Marketing initiatives:

a. Mixed Marketing Strategy

Product development,

Pricing development between 2013 and 2014

Product development, increase its range of products from organic and fresh produce found locally, and regionally.

Differentiation Strategy

Targeted high-end-users, health consumers, and organic market

Uses outsource network management & core competencies to increase efficiency.

Competitor strategy