Southern Goodness Catering

Group 5

Rocio Diaz, Kevin Ngo, Luis Sucre, Cornel Walton

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Summary 3

Letter of Authorization 4

About Southern Goodness 5

Problem 5

Objectives of the Research 5

Research Approach 6

Research Design 6

Data Analysis 6

Observations and Limitations 7

Recommendations 8

Conclusion 9

Appendix 10

Crosstabs 10

Tables 17

Southern Goodness Market Research Survey 1​8

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Executive Summary

Southern Goodness Catering has been catering to its loyal customers in the Wylie area for the past
six years with unique Southern cuisine and Mississippi hospitality. Serving mainly at holiday
parties and family celebrations, Southern Goodness Catering wishes to expand its catering services
to corporate lunches and events. Despite its attempts to reach this new audience, Southern
Goodness Catering is currently experiencing fluctuating clientele and low response on social
media. In order to discover why Southern Goodness Catering is experiencing these issues, a
market research was developed in the form of an online survey.

Charlene is currently undergoing a dilemma of seasonal fluctuations within her market. During the
summers, she has a consistent flow of clientele requiring her services. However, during most of
the year, she sees her business drop drastically. Our mission was to analyze this anomaly from a
marketing perspective and determine solutions on how to expand her brand. By further dissecting
her current practices, we could provide solutions to her fluctuating business pattern.

Our survey was administered for approximately two weeks to current Southern Goodness
customers and people in Charlene’s network. Through our survey word of mouth was revealed to
be one of the best methods for marketing and price to be one of Southern Goodness’ qualities.
After analyzing our findings, our team suggests Southern Goodness Catering to develop a more
impactful marketing strategy that will engage current and potential customers.

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Letter of Authorization

This letter is to confirm authorization for the distribution of a marketing research survey for
Southern Goodness Catering. Under the authorization of Charlene Foster, CEO of Southern
Goodness, we are permitted to retrieve and consolidate data that will be used to further analyze the
business’s marketing strategy. Once the data is collected, it will be utilized to determine solutions
on how to improve the business strategy of Southern Goodness.

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About Southern Goodness

Southern Goodness Catering is a local catering company headquartered in Wylie, Texas. Founded
in 2010, Southern Goodness prides itself in delivering authentic southern style food that accurately
represents the culture and the satisfying taste of Mississippi. Charlene Foster, owner of Southern
Goodness, started the company with her husband and has been in business for six years.
Charlene’s passion for cooking has resonated within her family for generations. When she finally
realized her passion, she immediately began spreading her name across the North Texas area.
Southern Goodness currently only provides quality southern-style food catering services for
individuals, with all of the food that she caters coming from her home kitchen. She currently
provides her services to her network of friends and family and people in the Wylie, Texas area.

Problem

Despite having the advantage of a unique product and an active presence online Charlene’s
Southern Goodness Catering is experience a several issues.

1. The clientele for Southern Goodness Catering is fluctuating at an extremely dangerous

pace. Currently the company is experiencing issues with keeping a consistent clientele
throughout the entire year. The owner, Charlene, mentioned having a massive drop in calls
from her normal clientele during the summer. This lack of clientele may be a result of her
clients traveling during that season.

2. Southern Goodness Catering is having trouble expanding its reach to a new target market,
large businesses/corporations. Currently, the company’s main business derives from
individuals seeking catering services for parties, weddings, and other small events.
However, the lack of a solid marketing strategy makes it difficult to effectively
communicate with potential corporate clients. Expanding the business to cater to large
business is one of the main goals Southern Goodness Catering hopes to accomplish.

3. Southern Goodness has a social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
However, Charlene’s presence is stifled by her inability to create responses on those
channels. Essentially, this has stagnated her online presence and has prevented her from
garnering awareness for her company.

Objectives of the Research

The primary objective for this research project is to gain more awareness for Southern Goodness
by addressing issues with Charlene’s social media accounts and give customers an opportunity to
provide more feedback about her business. Specifically, there were three main objectives for this
report. First, we want to gain knowledge of Charlene’s current customer base. By learning about
her customer base, we could figure out the pros and cons of her business strategy and determine

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solutions on how to improve it. Second, we want to analyze her brand awareness and confirm how
effective her marketing strategy is. We wanted to observe every avenue she used to market herself
including: social media, personal website, and any other method she used. Lastly, we wanted to
determine the right target market for her to penetrate. At the start of our research, Charlene said
her current goal was to reach out to Dallas businesses in the hopes of gathering corporate clientele
to offer catering services to. We wanted to analyze other demographics and see which group
would be optimum for her specific business strategy. The survey was geared to identify what her
target market desires from her company in an effort to improve her future marketing and business
strategy.

Research Approach

The main approach to this research is to devise an effective outlet that will highlight the errors in
the company’s current business strategy. This will help determine efficient and sustainable
solutions. These problems will be identified through a 11-question survey that will highlight what
preferences her target market demands from catering services and also identify key characteristics
of her target market’s demographics.

Research Design

Our data gathering method would be to introduce an online survey to individuals. Utilizing
Qualtrics, we plan to send out the surveys via e-mail. Our target goal for the total amount of
survey participants is 50 users. The type of questions that are on the survey include where people
find which place to order catering from, the price range, what type of event would the catering be
used for, etc.

Questions:
A. “How do we cater to the target market Southern Goodness is trying to reach?” OR “What
can we do to penetrate the target market?”
B. “What is our marketing plan?” OR “What sort of Marketing Plan would work with
Southern Goodness Catering?”

Data Analysis

Data collection was obtained from people currently in Charlene’s network with the purpose of
discovering how far her network extended. The results were not surprising in that a large majority
of her respondents are women and that her customer base does not extend out too much from the
Wylie location. 71% of those surveyed were from Wylie, 10% from Richardson, and the
remaining 19% from surrounding cities. This presents a major opportunity for Charlene where she
can use her reputation from the Wylie area to expand to other neighboring cities, especially
Richardson.

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The income of the people we surveyed ranged from low income, lower middle class, upper middle
class, and upper class. The majority of the respondent fell under the lower middle class and upper
middle class with a 57% and 33% respectively. Of the services that Southern Goodness Catering
offers, 71% of the respondents found price to be one the qualities that they liked best and a factor
they consider important when considering a catering service. Regardless of income price was the
top factor to consider followed by speed of catering. People will spend $100 to $500 for catering
and expect that decorations, servers, and tableware to be included.

Southern Goodness Catering has been having some issues with a fluctuating loyal clientele base
(massive drop in the summer), reaching a new target market, and finally determining why does a
stronger social media presence matter to the company. The data reveals why the catering company
is having these specific problems. 96% of people surveyed said they said that they used catering
services for holiday events, of the same group 55% of people say that they use catering companies
once to three times a year. So to answer the problem on why Southern Goodness is having this
problem is majority of people do say the they just use catering companies just for holiday events.
For trying to add a new target market with catering to corporate events only 33% of people said
that they would use catering company for corporate events. So the data would indicate that people
would just go to a restaurant rather than using a catering company. Lastly, the determining the
importance of a strong social media presence for Southern Goodness. The data shows that 53% of
people rely on word of mouth when trying to find a catering service and 42% find it online and for
the rest people said that they find it with social media which is the online word of mouth. So by
building a strong online presence people can talk about the company and help expand the reach of
Southern Goodness and increase business.

Observations and Limitations

There were a few limitations we encountered during the research project. For instance, we actually
had two data sets that we had to consolidate. This was mainly because we targeted two main
groups to survey: customers who had not used Southern Goodness before and those who have.
This made it particularly difficult to interpret the data once it was collected. Our survey
distribution was also problematic. We created our survey via Qualtrics and distributed them via an
anonymous online link. Since there were no paper copies for individuals, it made the process of
collecting data take far longer than it should have. The time constraints were also difficult to
handle during this process, especially when communicating with those who had used Charlene’s
business before. After sending those individuals the link to the survey, it took well over a week for
them to respond. These slow response rates would have been alleviated if we had used a paper
survey early on.

After reviewing the survey, we noticed a lot of consistencies, but also areas that required a bit
more focus. For instance, the survey would have proved more accurate if we had gathered more

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information on our participants’ characteristics such as: age, household size, and marital status.
This information would have added more depth to our analysis so we could better determine the
optimal target market for Southern Goodness. Also, the research process would have been easier if
we had devised a more structured strategy for locating prospective individuals to take the survey.
Aside from those who received the survey via email, there was no specific guide on retrieving
participants elsewhere. It was difficult determining where we should search so we ultimately
resorted to asking random individuals within the area. Most of the individuals who agreed were
residents of Wylie- the city Southern Goodness operates in- and were more than happy to
participate. Although our method was abrupt and obscure to some people, it proved to work.
Although we were successful in collecting the data, our methods lacked the necessary strategic
organization.

Recommendations

Based on our research, our recommendations for Southern Goodness Catering are to focus on
word of mouth marketing, and to redesign the marketing tactics for online marketing via creating
business accounts on social media, as well as understanding on how to effectively utilize social
media. From our results, most customers find catering services via word of mouth and online
search for catering is listed as the second highest. Her clientele includes her personal friends, who
would then spread word of her catering services to their friends and family, as well as the
co-workers of their friends and family. Having friends and family acting as a buzz team to spread
Southern Goodness around can work. Special campaigns can help as well, such as referral
promotions offering a discount for first time use of the catering service. Another idea is to
providing samples of the cuisine so that consumers know what the food tastes like and what is
expected from using this service. For a catering service, it is important that the customer likes the
food and know what it tastes like since taste differs from person to person.

For consumers that find catering services online, Southern Goodness Catering has 3 social media
accounts; a Facebook page that has 646 likes, an Instagram account with 355 followers, and a
Twitter account with 31 followers. One thing about Southern Goodness’ social media accounts is
that Charlene should learn how to effectively use social media; the usernames for Twitter and
Instagram are under @ChefCharleneDFW, while the Facebook page is Southern Goodness
Kitchen & Catering/@SouthernGoodnessCatering. Both the Facebook and Instagram accounts
have a lot of followers and pictures, but both are cluttered with some personal photos as well. The
Twitter account is the least active account. What we noticed was that for Twitter and Instagram,
both accounts were under Charlene’s name while the Facebook page was under the Southern
Goodness Catering name. We would recommend that there should be social media accounts for
Southern Goodness Catering under its own name instead of Charlene’s name. This would cause
less confusion, and the business and personal photos can be kept on separate accounts.

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Conclusion

The research we conducted above provided more insight towards Southern Goodness Catering and
what the business should do to optimize its marketing and overall business strategy. For a catering
company, the quality and the taste of the food is essential. Therefore, it would be in Charlene’s
best interest to provide some samples of her food whenever she markets her business.

A key improvement on the marketing strategy is for Charlene to spread the brand name of her
catering service to her peers, who would then spread the name around to their friends and families;
this is a great way to spread her business via word of mouth. After our analysis regarding brand
awareness, it appears that “word of mouth” was the most popular form of communication for
Southern Goodness. The brand thrives off of the buzz it gains from Charlene’s community; it
would be wise for Charlene to encourage her clients to spread her brand’s name as often and
frequently as possible. Charlene and Southern Goodness Catering have a lot of inconsistencies that
need to be addressed, but once they are able to fully implement this new marketing strategy and
gain a stronger brand awareness, Southern Goodness Catering will be the place to call for quality
Southern style catering.

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 Appendix

Crosstabs
Crosstab 1.
Row Variable: Annual Household income
Column Variable 1: How many times a year used catering service
Column Variable 2: Price that is willing to pay
Observed Frequencies

* For people that use catering with the majority income of $20,000 to $50,000 use catering
services 1 to 3 times a year and would pay $100 to $500.

Column Percents

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Row Percents

Crosstab 2.
Row Variable 1: Where do you find catering services?
Row Variable 2: What type of event would you use a catering company for?
Column Variable: Gender
Observed Frequencies:

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*Word of mouth was the highest form that people use to find a catering service, mostly do that
they will use it for family or social events almost exclusively.

Column Percents

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Row Percents

Crosstab 3.

Row Variable 1: Qualities about catering companies is most important?

Row Variable 2: Add decorations?

Row Variable 3: What additional Service?

Column Variable 1: Annual household income
Column Variable 2: Willingness to pay
Observed Frequencies

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* Price is very sensitive regardless of income. People will spend $100 to $500 for a price, and
expect that decorations and tableware to be included.

Column Percents

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Row Percents

Tables

Table 1.

Location Never 1-3 Times 4-6 Times 7-9 Times Over 9 Times Grand
Per Year Per Year Per Year Per Year Total

Allen 1 1

Dallas 1 1

Fort Worth 1 1

Garland 1 1

Hawthorne 1 1

Plano 2 1 3

Richardson 3 2 5

Rowlett 1 1

Sachse 1 1

Wylie 24 10 3 37

Grand Total 3 31 12 3 3 52

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Southern Goodness Market Research Survey

1. Which of the following qualities appealed to you the most about Southern Goodness
catering? (check all that apply)
a. Speed in delivery (14, 57.14%)
b. Flexibility with customer preferences (11, 46.94%)
c. Variety of menu items (12, 51.02%)
d. Price (17, 71.43%)
2. Rate which type of menu items you prefer (1 being the lowest and 4 being the highest)
a. Soups (Mean 1.86 Std Deviation 1.07 )
b. Entrees (Mean 3.35 Std Deviation 0.83)
c. Sandwiches (Mean 2.86 Std Deviation 0.97)
d. Desserts (Mean 2.9, Std Deviation 1.01)
3. Where do you go to find catering services?
a. Online (10, 42.86%)
b. Newspaper (0, 0%)
c. Word of Mouth (13, 53.06%)
d. Phonebook (1, 2.04%)
e. Other (1, 2.04%)
4. For what type of event would you hire a catering company (check all that apply)
a. Wedding (13, 55.10%)
b. Birthday Party (19, 79.59%)
c. Corporate Event (8, 32.65%)
d. Holiday Event (22, 89.80%)
e. Other (7, 30.61%)
5. Do you prefer the caterer to also provide decorations? (yes, no)
a. Yes (13, 55.32%)
b. No (10, 44.68%)
6. What additional services do you prefer the caterer to provide? (check all that apply)
a. Servers (10, 43.75%)
b. Tableware (21, 89.58%)
c. ​Other (1, 4.17%)
7. How many times per year do you use catering?
a. Never (1, 6%)
b. 1-3 times per year (14, 58%)
c. ​4-6 times per year (6, 24%)
d. 7-9 times per year (1, 6%)
e. Over 9 times per year (1, 6%)
8. How much are you willing to pay when you use catering for an event?

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 a. $0-100 (1, 6.12%)
b. $101-500 (10, 40.82%)
c. $501-1000 (8, 34.69%)
d. $1000 and up (4, 18.37%)
9. What is your gender? (The following is for classification purposes)
a. Male (7, 17%)
b. Female (43, 83%)
10. What is your annual household income? (The following is for classification purposes)
a. ​$0-20,000 (0, 0%)
b. $20,001-50,000 (14, 57.14%)
c. $50,001-100,000 (8, 32.65%)
d. Over $100,000 (2, 10.2%)
11. What is your current zip code?
a. Allen (1,1.92%)
b. Dallas (1,1.92%)
c. Fort Worth (1, 1.92%)
d. Garland (1, 1.92%)
e. Hawthorne (1, 1.92%)
f. Plano (2, 3.84%)
g. Richardson (5, 9.61%)
h. Rowlett (1, 1.92%)
i. Sachse (1, 1.92%)
j. Wylie (37, 71.15%)

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