The Coffee Bean And Tea Leaf | Analysis

The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (S) Pte Ltd , is a family-run coffee and tea company that has since grown into one of the largest privately- owned coffee company in the world. The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf has discovered the formula for a successful coffee and tea company. Firstly, I am going to find out about their history like how they have grown over the years and how they constantly manage and improve with the many obstacles until how they are like today. (Organizational structure) Secondly, I would also want to find out the different people involved and what they do, which is basically their jobs /roles in services, entertainment and more. Lastly, to find out their secret special marketing strategy compared to other coffee companies like Starbucks and The Coffee Connoisseur and how to compete and come up with better growth strategies.

Coffee Bean Intl’s founders got their passionate start in a small Oregon town, where they were fanatically roasting beans for neighbors, friends and themselves. But they didn’t stay small town for long. During the intervening decades, Coffee Bean Intl has grown from a small two-man storefront into one of the nation’s largest and most respected wholesale specialty coffee roasters, well known for its traditional artisan approach to roasting. We were one of the first roasters in the nation to promote dark roasts, develop flavored coffees, and offer certified organic and certified fair trade coffees.

Today, over one million cups of our distinctive hand-roasted coffees are enjoyed each day by coffee lovers all across the country. Coffee Bean Intl’s extensive customer base throughout North America includes several thousand independent specialty coffee retailers, as well as some of America’s most well-respected national retailers.

1.0 Introduction

1.1 Background

The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’ is a coffee chain company that produces Californian-based coffee. The company was founded by 2 people, Mona and Herbert Hyman.

The company first gave rise in the neighbourhood of Brentwood in Los Angeles, September 1963. The Coffee Bean today has many locations all over the world including San Francisco, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Honolulu and all over Southern California including Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Ventura. Many “Coffee Beans stores” which are found outside of California are franchises.

Most of these stores that are located all around the world are franchised. A great entrepreneur, Victor Sassoon, from Singapore had a vision of expanding the company Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’ and therefore opened locations throughout Southeast Asia including Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines many more.

Accommodating to the current society which is rich in technology and to cater to consumers’ having demands to be online 24/7, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf offers Wi-Fi Internet access at virtually all company-owned stores and franchise stores. The company started installing the Wi-Fi units in mid 2008 and many stores had the wireless service by the third-quarter of the year. The service is totally free and does not require any types of registration or payment.

1.2 Objective

The purpose of this report is to identify the company’s potential growth throughout the years as it started from a small coffee stall by using the help on marketing strategy analysis. With a good marketing strategy, a small coffee stall would be able to grow to become a huge franchise company.

The purpose of identifying the different roles is to basically tell us that Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’ is proud to present their extended services by taking the extra mile to allow customers to reach Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’ in the nearest way and convenient way by providing delivery services and so on.

Lastly, the aim of this report is to allow us to identify and make sure that The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’ would be able to out win other coffee companies like Starbucks and The Coffee Connoisseur.

1.3 Scope

In this report, certain marketing analysis would be done on the company to achieve the objectives. Due to the limitation of history of The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’ the step by step process of how The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’ gradually grows would be touched on. However, research would be used to prove how the company managed to grow to a huge franchise company today from a small coffee stall.

2.0 SWOT Analysis of The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaves

2.1 The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaves’ strength

2.1.1 Recruiting and training programme

One of the strength that this company possesses is start up a regional office in Singapore that would provide training and recruitment to the regional countries around. Before there was a regional training and recruitment office, the staffs and managers were recruited by local consultant agencies. By having this Recruiting and training programme, The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaves each manager that is trained by the programme would be suitable and being knowledgeable with experience about the area. With the help of the training, they would be able to provide the best solution with any problem that arises, changing and adapting to new strategies. Staffs that go through the training programme would be less introvert and be more direct when it comes to customer service. Trained staffs would then be able to help customers with their needs without any problem, providing a pleasant service.

2.1.2 Special marketing strategy

Another strength of this company is to have a special marketing strategy to attract customers in a high volume and also be known around by consumers through location of high visibility. The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaves uses two types of market entry strategies which are master franchising and company owned-stores. To be in an advantage in the foreign market, marketing approach is essential. For The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaves, the 3 main marketing approaches are market entry, marketing position, and site location. The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaves prefers master franchising as a mode of entry to the market in Asia. Due to the difference in environments from the USA and Singapore, the system, products and marketing have been modified and changed to fit to the different environments. In the USA, company owned-stores were used instead.

2.1.3 Franchise

Other than just master franchising, franchise communication is also another strength the The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaves make use of. The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaves would communicate between franchisee and franchisor to allow more information to be gathered by the franchisor to help see the franchisee’s problems which were faced during their beginning stages of franchising in a new area or region.

Reference

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coffee_Bean_&_Tea_Leaf (background)

  http://www.businessteacher.org.uk/wp-content/swot-analysis-image.png (swot analysis picture)

  http://www.echeat.com/essay.php?t=27607 (comparison)

  http://www.scribd.com/doc/3987705/The-Coffee-Bean-Tea-Leaf-Swot-Analysis (swot analysis)

  http://www.ehow.com/about_4617203_what-weaknesses-coffee-industry.html (weakness)

  http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-125877547.html (articles on coffee)