Marketing Plan for Taj Mahal Restaurant - Essay Example

Taj Mahal Restaurant Food is recognized as basic human need today and tasty food, the utmost desire. Restaurant business is considered to be one of the attractive investment opportunities as more and more people pouring into the streets of New York to dine out at their favorite eating place. Restaurants specialized in Chinese, Italian, and Thai foods have sprung up around the streets to satisfy the growing appetite of foreign food. The Indian cuisines are newest to join the list with very few places serving quality Indian food. Taj Mahal restaurant is a place which specializes in original, spicy Indian food made by proficient Indian chefs. The interior of the restaurant will be decorated according to Indian Architecture with Indian Classical music playing in the background. We offer an unforgettable dining experience which takes the customer on an exciting journey through Indian culture. The Market: The Indian food has recently become very popular in the masses due to its unique spicy taste. A good demand exists for this new and delicious genre of food. Our main customers will be the large numbers of New Yorkers who have heard about the Indian food and are looking for a quality place to eat, those couples and families who are bored from the routine food outlets and want something special, and a huge number of south Asian residents and tourists coming to the city centers every year. We are aware that the customers may not feel comfortable with the original names and taste of the Indian dishes. Hence, we shall make the menu look familiar by giving English names, in addition to the original name, to most of the dishes and by offering a lesser spicy option for every meal. Most of these customers are often looking for more than just a nice dining experience. They are looking for not just the taste but the ‘feel’ of the food. At Taj Mahal Restaurant we have a very different and unique style of serving food. People entering the restaurant will feel, from the environment, decoration and music, as if they have walked into an Indian Palace. The hotel staff will be dressed in traditional Indian attires. Amenities such as Mehndi (beautiful patterns on hands for girls and women) and Paan (traditional appetizer for Indian men) will add to the fun of eating at Taj Mahal. Hence our restaurant is not just about serving good food to its customers but it gives an entertaining insight into the Indian Culture, their way of living and their way of spending memorable moments. However, all these arrangements will make the products a little more expensive as compared to other restaurants specialized in different kinds of foreign foods. Most of the traditional Indian recipes are vegetarian and their raw materials are readily available from the market. Indian spices were not very common a few years back but now these can also be located in market. As the spices can be stored for long durations without any deterioration, these can even be imported directly from Indian in large quantities if required. Indian restaurants are still not very common in USA. Those few which are serving Indian food are lack the style and experiences that we are offering at Taj Mahal. Major competition to Taj Mahal is offered by other restaurants serving foreign especially Asian food. Prominent among those are Chinese and Thai food restaurants. The newly earned popularity of Indian culture will however serve as major advantage that we have over other places. Moreover, by developing a good organizational culture and hiring professional cooks and workers, we shall offer a quality unmatchable by any other restaurant in the area. The Strategy: Our restaurant idea mainly focuses on the customers that are looking for something different from the regular eating experience. Affordability is not an issue for the tier of customers looking for stylish, unique and lively outing experience. Hence, price of the food, being kept a little high, will not be presented as a selling point. There are other restaurants which serve different kinds of ethnic foods, all at one place. We at Taj Mahal do not agree with this strategy either. We believe in a whole food experience rather than just enjoying the taste of it. The main selling point for our business will hence be the environment and the depiction of Indian culture in the restaurant. We shall invite everyone to our restaurant to ‘feel the food’. The New Yorker will be attracted towards having an insight into this new culture without actually travelling to India. The South – Asian tourists and US citizens will have a chance to revive their memories of home. Our strategy will be to use direct advertising with comparatively low cost advertising means. The common advertising means such as newspapers, magazines, pamphlets etc. will be utilized. The advertising material will be directed at places frequently visited by prospective customers such as cinemas, shopping malls, popular tourist destinations, Hindu worship places, and Islamic Centers etc. Advertisements will also be placed in local food channels and magazines. Budget: The initial capital required for the business is $1,000,000 which includes the lease of building, the cost of furniture, interior decoration etc. and initial organizational and marketing expenses. The financial details of the business plan are elaborated in the following table (projected over a period of five years). Revenues, expenses and profits are estimated annually to accommodate seasonal variations in sales. Inflation rate is assumed 3% and a modest growth rate of 5 – 7% is expected. An average tax rate of 5% is considered. Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Sales $950,000 $1,448,750 $2,209,344 $3,612,277 $5,906,073 Direct costs of sales $290,550 $383,526 $506,254 $668,256 $882,098 Indirect expenses $10,000 $10,300 $10,609 $10,927 $11,255 Total cost $300,550 $393,826 $516,863 $679,183 $893,353 Gross Profits $649,450 $1,054,924 $1,692,480 $2,933,094 $5,012,720 Marketing Expenses $30,000 $36,500 $41,800 $23,000 $23,000 Organization Expenses $455,000 $662,520 $979,000 $1,358,650 $2,875,050 Repairs and Maintenance Cost $11,000 $11,330 $11,670 $12,020 $12,381 Gross Profits $153,450 $344,574 $660,011 $1,539,424 $2,102,290 Taxes $47,500 $72,438 $110,467 $180,614 $295,304 Net Profit $105,950 $272,137 $549,543 $1,358,810 $1,806,986 In the above table, the indirect sales expenses include the cost incurred on amenities offered at the restaurant. The marketing expenses include the cost of advertisement campaigns and promotional activities. The organizational expenses include the salaries of employees, the music and entertainment expenses, legal facility charges, utility bills, printing and decoration expenses etc. Conclusion: The restaurant business is very profitable investment when carefully planned. Examples show that those restaurants have a good rate of success which comes up with innovative ideas to meet an existing market need. Indian culture and food has recently gain popularity among western consumers. Still there are very little places to fill the growing appetite for Indian food. In this scenario, Taj Mahal Restaurant is a professionally conceived business plan to attract customers through a unique entertainment package along with quality food. Hence, it is hoped that the idea will gain popularity beyond expectations. Works Cited De Bruin, Anne, and Ann Dupuis. Entrepreneurship: new perspectives in a global age. Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003. Print. Moore, Karl, and Niketh Pareek. Marketing: The basics. Second. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2010. Print. Read More