Christine Bergeron,
Daniela Agudelo Sarcos
Anne Laganière
401-101-LW
February 28, 2014
Second Cup
Description of the Franchise:
Second Cup Ltd started off in 1975 as a small commercial chain selling only whole bean coffee. Today, Second Cup is one of the top coffee chains in Canada, selling fair-trade and organic coffee and tea while providing humanitarian support in less developed countries. Second Cup has 350 cafés all across Canada as seen on Secondcup.com and is the second largest chain to this date.
Competitive Environment:
Second Cup is often in competition with brands such as Starbucks and Tim Horton’s. While these two brand names are extremely well known, Second Cup Ltd separates themselves from other retailers by producing coffee
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The website is designed uniquely to represent their brand, and is enjoyable and easy to use. (1)
Weaknesses (Internal):
A weakness that Second Cup has is that their pricing, compared to other competitors, is more expensive than most. Because Second Cup Ltd pledges to buy fair-trade and organic coffee beans and tea, the prices at which these ingredients are acquired is higher, which directly impacts the price of each beverage made. This alone can influence consumers to gravitate towards more “economical” options. Another weakness Second Cup has is that their café card does not offer extras that would make their card more sought after. Some of their competitors offer rewards programs, which are more popular. Starbucks for example, offers customers a rewards card where once a customer registers they receive emails with personalized rewards, such as receiving a free drink on your birthday.
Opportunities (External): An opportunity that Second Cup could pursue would be to advertise more. Second Cup is not as well known as other coffee chains, and the use of marketing on the television, in newspapers, and on the radio could gain interest from potential customers. Another opportunity that Second Cup could look into would be extending their chain by offering more locations throughout Canada, and even opening up franchises in different countries, such as the United States of America. This would create an opportunity
In addition to that, I also found an article which explained the process on how Tim Hortons Develops it’s coffee. It gives an interesting perspective on how big fast food brands go about developing their
•New Attitudes - Roots have a collection of Roots Athletics, Roots Kids, Baby Roots, Roots leather, Roots men and women and Roots•In partnership with Second Cup. Canada's leading specialty coffee retailer "Second Cup", unveiled a hot new Café Collection designed exclusively by Roots Canada's lifestyle brand for Second Cup's Certified Baristas and Coffee Agents. It's the ideal match of two of the hottest brands in Canada.
The coffee served in Second Cup is also high quality and the drinks available strongly rival those in Starbucks. In the past decade there has been an explosive growth of 157% in the area of coffee shop market. Canadian coffee market share, new companies have limited to no space for growth in North America. Second Cup’s market share at the Canadian market is about 8%.Upon these facts and analysis there is an unlimited growth possibilities in the coffee market in Canada. There are different factors that do influence in the purchase of coffee from these outlets and the the way these coffees are priced. Customers are reluctant to get coffee from these outlets as the prices are too high than the coffees that could be made at home. There is a huge conflict between the pricing of coffees at these places and homemade ones. Coffee shops are determined to serve the best quality coffees which are been imported from South America and Africa, due to the rise in oil prices transportation charges have also been increased. And also due to different global climatic conditions the prices of these gourmet coffee beans have been increased.
The overall aim of the project will be to create an online presence to showcase their products. The website will reduce advertising costs and also streamline the ordering process.
Although the price of Starbucks’ coffee is always a big trouble for students undergraduate, they are using healthier ingredients. By calculating for the prices of organic milk and best seller coffee beans, it is very clear that their price is much cheaper than even the ingredients, which is impossible as there was also money for electricity, money for renting the shop, and so on. So it is clear that they don’t use very slap-up ingredients. By contrast extra charge in Starbucks could be seen as they uses better ingredients, as I always seen them using organic milk pouring into coffee, and also their website clearly says that they use organic milk and those coffee beans they sell in shops, which are known as fresh and healthy coffee
Starbucks’ lead in the specialty coffee industry exemplifies the result of deftly executing a well-planned business strategy. Moreover, Starbucks is well positioned for what is expected to be a continuing rise in the popularity of specialty coffee products. The question before Starbucks’ leadership, however, is what avenues will lead to Starbucks’ goal of remaining true to its core, the highest quality coffee products while providing a “total coffee experience” for its customers?
In general the coffeehouse industry in the United States was experiencing an increase in coffee consumption per capita due to the “Starbucks effect”. At this time Starbucks was operating approximately 20,000 stores in the United States and was living a fast expansion strategy worldwide.
Starbucks is acclaimed for its superior value proposition in the early 1990’s by creating an experience around the consumption of coffee, a ‘third place’. The brand is positioned to offer the highest quality coffee, close customer intimacy, and warm atmosphere or ambience.
Starbucks have shown in the past that they are very good at taking advantage of opportunities. In an strategy alliance with Hewlett Packard, customers could create their own music CD within a Starbucks coffee shop. Thus the company could look for these kind of opportunities to seize. In addition, new markets for coffee are emerging such as India and the Pacific Rim nations, also Europe which is getting more and more accustomed with the brand name “Starbucks”. Co-branding with other manufacturers of food and drink, and brand franchising to manufacturers of other goods and services both have potential.
A recent primary research survey has found that 70% of occasional coffee drinkers view the Mr. Coffee brand as an inferior or budget coffee brewing device that does not make a superior cup of coffee (Appendix, Opinion survey). Brands such as Keurig, Cuisinart, and DeLonghi inspire more thoughts of quality coffee than Mr. Coffee. Other consumers are opting to spend several dollars per cup of coffee at coffee houses such as Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, Dunkin Donuts, and even McDonalds (Appendix, Opinion survey).
The “Coffee Wars – The Big Three: Starbucks, McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts” article focuses on the company analysis of the Starbucks brand and how its main competitors, McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts, has affected their brand and driven competition higher. Even though there are many companies trying to enter the specialty coffee market, these three companies own the majority of the market share. With Starbucks’ top quality and above average prices they hold a different market than the fast coffee/food market of Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks; yet the competitive moves Dunkin’ Donuts has made over the years in order to compete with Starbucks and surpass McDonald’s has driven competition up between all three companies. The competition has stiffened ever more in the past ten years due to the changing economy. This led to “the big three” to come up with different techniques to gain competitive advantage over the other. Although the competition between these companies is to gain most of the market share, consumers are still loyal to a certain brand; this makes it difficult to gain each other’s clientele. McDonald’s continues to appeal to customers who want value and speed, Dunkin’ Donuts focuses on the middle-class, while Starbucks a customer who desires a higher quality product along with being recognized for using the brand.
This is a coffee with two sugars, and two creams. You’ll most likely hear this at Tim Horton’s, one of Canada’s most popular coffee chains. Tim Horton’s is also known for its doughnuts. Canadians seem to have a bit of an obsession with doughnuts, myself included, as we have the most doughnut shops per capita. So when you stop by Timmy’s (Tim Hortons), be sure to try a doughnut with your double-double. Or if you’re like me and you hate coffee, have a hot chocolate instead.
The growing chained coffee shops culture in the on-trade has inspired manufacturers to launch specialty coffees in the off-trade. This has led to an increase in both volume and value sales of coffee in the Netherlands. Dutch consumers are becoming more adventurous when it comes to coffee, as is illustrated by the growing popularity of espresso, cappuccino, single origin coffee and flavored coffee.
Starbucks provide a large in store seating with free wi fi and a take-out service which only a few retail shops offer. The main target customers for Starbucks are office workers, with enough income, whom are able to afford the high prices of their products (Gaudio, 2003). The company has worked hard to establish itself as the brand leader with its branding as the most frequently drank coffee and noticeable brand logo. Introduction of promotions like the Starbucks Card, allows a more convenient way for a person to pay for your drinks and earn rewards for your purchase (Starbucks Coffee Company, 2011). Furthermore, in‐store promotions accompanied by new products and amenities like free internet use are all strategies that Starbucks use to maintain their position in the market (Vasudha, 2011).
Like it was with McDonald’s when it first appeared in Sarajevo, there was initial appeal and hype about Starbucks’ appearance in Australia. However, after trying their products, many customers quickly realized that they this ‘unique experience’ that Starbucks promised them, is not much different than the one offered by other cafés, like Gloria Jean’s or Coffee Club. To make things worse, the quality of Starbucks coffee has declined over the years. Therefore, they were harshly criticized by the Australian community, and their coffee was described as ‘watered down product’, ‘gimmicky’ and consisting of ‘buckets of milk’.