Marketing Strategy Concept and Practices of Aftur Cuisine African Restaurant: Case Study

Executive Summary

Aftur cuisine® African Restaurant is an Turkish incorporated business that will be situated in one of the cities with a Large African population – Istanbul municipality Area, which is the most populated city in Turkey, but hopes to spread out to more bigger cities in turkey within the first 5 years of service.

We have already reached a position of renting a place close to a major road that is big enough to carry out our activities. The place is situated in Eskişehir caddesı opposite Anadolu mahallesi, a residemtial area known for its high African population in Istanbul.

Aftur cuisine® African Restaurant, will participate in selling different type of African cuisine and drinks. We will also be providing catering services, fast food services, take-away services in our chains of African restaurant channel that will be spread all across major cities in Turkey.

We know about the existence of different African restaurants that are selling various type of African food in Istanbul, that is why we invested our time and resources in order to carefully study the African restaurant market carefully. Our sole reason for carrying out these studies was to know the various fields in which our competitors have failed. Additionally, we aim to provide more options that our competitors are not willing to offer.

We have free home delivery services, payment after services and unlimited drinks.

Not only focusing more on selling African cuisine and drinks, but our customer care will also be our highest priority.

Aftur cuisine® African Restaurant, will make sure that all our potential customers are served well anytime they visit our restaurant. We have created an application that will help us manage a one on one relationship with our customers no matter how large our customer base may be . We will make sure that we get our customers engaged when making some business decisions that will directly affect them.

Aftur cuisine® African Restaurant is owned by Mr Masud Aminu Bature. Mr Bature has not went through any formal training about food cooking or restaurant management. However, Mr Bature has experience working as a chef in one of the famous restaurants in West Africa.

Our Product and Service Offerings

Aftur cuisine® African Restaurant Looks forward to providing outstanding services with, of course, great African cuisines.

Our aim to start our African restaurant is to perform favorably in the industry and make money from the industry, and we will do everything that is required by the law in Turkish Republic to accomplish our corporate objective. The products and services are specified below;

• Sale of African traditional dishes like; African peppered Jollof Rice, Waki, Pounded Yam, Fufu and kpomo (cow skin) meat soup, Banku and catfish, cin-cin and grilled fish, Tuwon shinkafa Tuwon dawa , Plantain and yam balls served with tomato soup.
• Sale of burgers
• Sale of drinks like wine, juice and coke

Our Vision Statement

Our vision is to be the biggest African restaurant in Istanbul and to establish African restaurant chains in cities and towns of Turkey.

Our Mission Statement

Our goal is to create chains of African restaurants that will provide the people of Istanbul and other locations in Turkey with a broad range of inspired African delicacies and beverages at affordable prices.

Objectıves

The goals for the first year of service are:

• Selling 40,000 or more main meals
• Achieving a sales target of US$75,000
• Our organizational structure

Our aim to start an African restaurant is to create a standard enterprise in Istanbul. Even though our African establishment isn’t as large as most of the sector’s major brands, we will make sure to implement the vital factors to achieve our planned goals. We must make sure we employ professional, trustworthy, consumer-centric people that are willing to work to help us create a profitable company that can benefit all investors.

In light of this, we have chosen to employ qualified and experienced hands to hold the below roles;

• Chief Executive Officer (Masud Aminu)
• Manager
• Human Resources and Admin Manager
• Chef/Kitchen Workers
• Sales and Marketing Manager
• Accountants/Cashiers
• Waiters/Waitress
• Motorbikes Drivers/Deliverers
• Cleaners
• Security

African Restaurant Business Plan – SWOT Analysis

Our aim to start only one branch of our African restaurant in Istanbul to evaluate the business for 3 to 5 years in order to see if we are going to invest additional capital, expand operations and then launch more locations. We believe that if we perform a comprehensive SWOT analysis for our business, we will be able to place our company to optimize our power, exploit resources, minimize our losses, and be prepared to deal with our challenges.

Strength:

Owner has 12 year experience in preparing meals for events in the food service industry. Our venue, the marketing strategy on which we will work (physical location with an active social media presence), the variety of payment methods, the broad range of African-inspired cuisines and beverages and our great customer service philosophy will certainly be a powerful advantage for Aftur Restaurant.

Weakness:

The owner has little experience running a restaurant on a full scale. The reality that we are a recent African restaurant and we do not have the financial ability to deal with multi-million dollar restaurants which also serve African-inspired cuisine is a significant weakness which may work against us.

Opportunities:

Menu to include any other kınd of cuisine can be easily broadened. The idea that we’ll run our African restaurant in one main street with a huge African presence in Istanbul will give us the unlimited opportunities to sell our African Inspired cuisine to a lot of customers. Market can also be extended geographıcally.

Threat:

With no significant capital investment, this enterprise cannot be started. Like every other company, one of the biggest challenges we might face is economic crisis. During the economic crisis people may likely not prepare to eat outside rather prepare food at home. The economic crisis affects the spending habit of a consumer. Another challenge we may encounter can be the emergence of a new African restaurant or traditional restaurant serving inspired African cuisine in the same area as ours.

Demographics

Even though there are no official numbers about how many Africans live in Turkey, as of 2019, the government-run Anadolu News Agency estimated the number of Africans in Turkey at about 1.5 million, Three out of five prefer to live in Istanbul. There are also a very high number of sub-Saharan African students in universities across Istanbul and turkey as a whole. Statistics from the YOK (Turkey Higher Education Board) put their amount at about 9,500. Turkey has hosted 12.8 million visitors during the first five months of 2019, up from 11.5 million a year ago. ‘Istanbul is on track to meet its goal of welcoming 15 million visitors set for 2020,’ said the Istanbul Mayor’s office announcement.

African Restaurant Business Plan – Market Analysis

Our Target Market

One thing about African cuisines is that it’s not just for Blacks and people of African origin; it is for everyone in Turkey including tourist from other countries. In view of that, we have designed Menus that will match the taste of people from different walks of life.

We will be retailing our products to the preceeding groups of individuals:

• African migrants
• Expats
• African students
• Event Planners
• Vegans
• Schools
• Business People
• Sports Men and Women
• Tourists

Competitive Advantage

A close analysis of the restaurant business that involves African restaurants shows that over the past few years the business has become more competitive. In fact, if you need to function in this sector, you need to be incredibly creative, buyer-centric, and assertive. We are mindful of the rivalry and we are willing to compete with various African food establishments in Istanbul. We will ensure that our menu is equipped with different types of African cuisine, which will make it hard for a customer to leave our outlet before making a purchase. Our unique business strategies such as, acceptance of various method of payments, top-notch customer care services as well as a secured business place will give us an effective competitive advantages.

Sales and Marketing Strategy

Aftur® cuisine African Restaurant, is aimed at maximizing profits in the restaurant industry, and so we will ensure that we meet business goals and objectives. The selling of the following items at cheap prices will generate our source of revenue;

• Sale of African traditional dishes like; African peppered Jollof Rice, Waki, Pounded Yam, Fufu and kpomo (cow skin) meat soup, Banku and catfish, cin-cin and grilled fish, Tuwon shinkafa Tuwon dawa , Plantain and yam balls served with tomato soup.
• Sale of burgers
• Sale of drinks like wine, juice and coke

Sales Forecast

Whenever it relates to the food business, one aspect is certain, if your restaurant is strategically located, you will often draw aggregate sales from customers and that will turn into increasing revenue development for the enterprise. We are quite well equipped to take on the food market in Istanbul and we are quite confident that we will achieve our goal of producing adequate revenue / earnings after the first 4 months of service and grow the business and our customer base. We were able to examine the African food industry, we examined our business prospects and we were capable of coming up with the corresponding revenue estimate. Here is the Aftur Cuisine® African Restaurant sale forecast

• First Fiscal Year: $75,000
• Second Fiscal Year: $90,000
• Third Fiscal Year: $140,000

This prediction was made on the basis of what can be achieved in the market and on the premise that there will be no major economic crisis and that there will be no major competitors selling the same cuisine as we do at the same place

Marketing Strategy and Sales Strategy

We performed a comprehensive market study and risk assessments before selecting a place for Aftur cuisine ® African Restaurant, so that we could reach We recruited experts with good restaurant industry experience to assist us build pricing strategies that will help us achieve our corporate goal of getting a greater percentage of the food market available in Istanbul the competitive market and become the favorite choice in Istanbul.

To sum up, the preceeding marketing and sales method will be adopted by Aftur cuisine® African Restaurant, to win over consumers;

• Launch our African restaurant with a reception for everyone
• Give welcome letters to corporate bodies, caterers, families and African societies in Istanbul.
• Make sure that we always have a broad range of African cuisines and beverages in our menu
• Build a loyalty package for us to encourage our regular clients
• Using our sales agents to engage in public advertising

Publicity and Advertising Strategy

Given the well-located position of our African restaurant, we will go forward to boost business ads.

Below are the advert strategies we aim to adopt

• Make sure our posters and banners are placed in key locations across Istanbul
• Taking advantage of Internet and social media channels like instagram, horoscope, viber, twitter and facebook to promote our restaurant
• Label all our official cars and delivery bikes and make sure our logo shirt or hat is worn at regular intervals by all our team members.
• Promote our business on our official site and use techniques attract potential consumer

Our Pricing Strategy

Pricing is one of the critical factors which gives restaurants strength, it’s common for customers to go to restaurants in which they can pay for food at lower prices, and that is why major players in the food industry would keep attracting tons of buyers. We understand we don’t really have the ability to compete against larger African restaurant, so we’re going to make sure that the costs of all cuisines throughout our restaurant are reasonable.

Payment methods

At Aftur cuisine® African Restaurant, Our payment system is all-inclusive since we realized that various people enjoy different payment methods.

• Payment with cash( Turkish lira, Dollar, Euro)
• Payment via credit cards(POS Machines)
• Payment via online bank transfer for purchase that is more than 100TL

Start-up Expenditure (Budget)

These will be the important areas we would be focusing on

• Overall cost of business registration in Turkey – $1000.
• Legal costs for insurance, licensing and financial services (technology, P.O.S and other software)– $1,300.
• Marketing advertising costs for the official opening of Aftur cuisine® African Restaurant, LLC for $3,500 and flyer printing (2,000 flyers at $0.04 per copy) for a sum of $3,580.
• The cost for construction and design of the restaurant – $10,000
• Operating costs for the first three months (staff salaries, payments, etc.) – $10,000
• Stock start-up costs (food products, beverages, packaging, etc.) – $5,000
• Equipment storage (bins, cabinets, food boxes) – $3,720
• The cost of purchase of delivery motorbikes – $6000
• The buying costs of furniture and equipment (computers, printers, telephones, televisions, sound systems, tables and chairs etc.) – $4,000.
• Website start-up costs – $600
• Our launching party costs $1,000
• Miscellaneous – $1500

To effectively set up our African restaurant in Istanbul we will need around $50,000

Source of income

Aftur cuisine ® African Restaurant, is founded and financed by Masud Aminu Bature and some of his family members. He do not plan to invite any outside business associate, and that is why he tried to limit start-up capital funding to three main sources.

• Accumulate half of the start-up funds out of savings and investments
• Short-term loans from close friends
• Request for a business loan from the bank

We were capable of generating around $20,000 ($15,000 in private savings and $5000 in informal loans from friends) and we are in the final phases of receiving $30,00 loan package from the bank.

Strategy for sustainable development and extension

An organizational ‘ future lies in the amount of regular customers they possess, their employees ‘ capacity and knowledge, their investment portfolio, and the business model. If all these things are absent from a corporation, it won’t be very long until the business closes. Some of our main aims of launching Aftur Cuisine® African Restaurant, LLC is to create a business that will sustain its own income without raising funds from outside investors once the business is going effectively.

We know that one way to gain acceptance and win over consumers is to sell our inspired African cuisines and beverages a bit more affordable than what’s available on the market and we’re happy to live for a while on a lower profit margin. Aftur cuisine® African Restaurant, LLC must ensure that the best frameworks, systems and procedures are put in place to ensure that the well-being of the employees is taken care of. We believe that when these are implemented, we will recruit and retain the best hands we could get in the sector effectively and they would be more dedicated to work together to build our dream enterprise.

Conclusion (list of checks)

• Accessibility test of the resturant name: done
• Certification of the corporation: done
• Opening business account: done
• Acquiring the point of sale machine (P.O.S): done
• Opening of Internet banking: Completed
• Application for business license and permit from the Turkısh government: done
• Acquiring earthquake and other critical Insurance for the Business : done
• Renting of facility and remodeling the restaurant: In Progress
• Business Registration in Tax office: done
• Lunching internet Payment options: done
• Conducting Feasibility Studies: ın progress
• Creating Awareness for the business both online and around the community: In Progress
• Health and Safety and Fire Safety Arrangement : done
• Employment of staffs: in-progress
• Getting soft loan from family or close frıends: done