Roxbury Cafe (April, 2012)

Situation Assessment

• The client was a small family-oriented cafe and coffee shop in Roxbury, MA, offering an array of breakfast options, sandwiches and coffee.
• The cafe was founded in 2009 by a 14-year military veteran with limited prior business experience.
• Since its inception, the cafe has had difficulty generating significant traffic, awareness of the café remains low, and it has struggled to cover its expenses.
• Additionally, the café has not done extensive research into the prices, hours and marketing efforts of competitors, and is not clear on how it is positioned relative to other cafes in the area.
• The owner reached out to Main Street Partners for assistance, and Main Street Partners conducted an 8-week project to address the cafe’s specific needs.

Overview of Project Outcomes

• Developed a low-cost marketing campaign focused on the cafe’s target customer group, leveraging the best practices of competitors.

• Focused both on improving online marketing through resources like Yelp, Facebook and Urbanspoon, as well as developing a gameplan and materials for traditional flyer marketing around the neighborhood.
• Benchmarked the cafe’s prices and hours of operation against local competitors to determine opportunities for improvement.
• Based on these findings, Main Street Partners determined that the cafe’s prices were well below that of the competition across the board, and that the cafe was missing a significant opportunity by being closed on Sunday.  Main Street Partners developed a new menu for the cafe, with new hours of operation and improved pricing on key menu items.
• Developed an overview of workplace compliance requirements and ensure that Ma and Pa is following proper protocol related to insurance, payroll, wages and capacity.
• Assisted the cafe in implementing a new bookkeeping and payroll system, which will improve the ease and accuracy of its record keeping.
• Assisted in organizing a booth at the “On Our Way to the Top” music event to generate increased community awareness
• Revamped the cafe’s website to improve aesthetics and better convey the cafe’s strengths
• Introduced customer feedback mechanism and incorporated findings from ~50 customers into a set of recommendations for the cafe.
• Through this research, determined that customers are extremely satisfied with the cafe’s quality and service, but that there was significant opportunity to build awareness through marketing, with over 90% of customers hearing about the cafe from friends or seeing it on the street.
• Developed a two-year strategic plan to help the cafe prioritize initiatives and accomplish goals.