Product, placement, backrground, executive summary, recommendations, budget
constraints
Executive Summary
Louie’s Café is a local diner located near LSU’s campus in the heart of Baton Rouge. It
serves breakfast, lunch and dinner 24 hours a day and has been a staple of the community
for 72 years. It moved to its current location at the North Gates of LSU in 1986. The
team’s main contact is the owner, Jimmy, who took over in 1977. They can be found online
at louiescafe.org.
Louie’s Cafe not only boasts a traditional diner menu of hamburgers, chicken fried steak,
clubs, and grilled cheese sandwiches, but also offers food unique to Louisiana such as
Gumbo, sautéed seafood salads, and poboys. This is just a small sample of the over 80
breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu offerings that are available 24/7. Louie’s Cafe currently
employs 44 people and has average sales of $9.50 per person. Majority of the sales come
during the weekend with heavy emphasis on late night and breakfast times. Louie’s target
customers can be segmented into two groups: students and faculty and alumni.
Our marketing goal for Louie’s is to increase lunch sales by increasing awareness of lunch
offerings. Our proposed marketing mix includes both traditional and digital mediums
including radio, magazines, Facebook, and Instagram. We focused our marketing research
on understanding both the buyer and non-buyer in order to get a better understanding of
how to target our potential and existing customers. Through surveys, focus groups, and
interviews, we were able to gather qualitative data on the wants and needs of our
customers and determine what marketing mix will yield the best results.
Understand Business, Markets, and Customers
Client Profile
Louie’s Café is a Baton Rouge institution, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner 24 hours a
day. Louie’s Café has been a staple of the community for 72 years, but moved to its current
location at the North Gates of LSU in 1986. The team’s main contact is the owner,
Jimmy, who took over in 1977. They can be found online at louiescafe.org.
Louie’s Cafe not only boasts a traditional diner menu of hamburgers, chicken fried steak,
clubs, and grilled cheese sandwiches, but also offers food unique to Louisiana such as
Gumbo, sautéed seafood salads, and poboys. This is just a small sample of the over 80
breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu offerings that are available 24/7. Louie’s Cafe currently
employs 44 people and has average sales of $9.50 per person. Majority of the sales come
during the weekend with heavy emphasis on late night and breakfast times.
Market Analysis
The restaurant industry is a driving force of the Louisiana economy. According to the
National Restaurant Association, there are 8,169 Louisiana restaurants and they are
projected to have $6.8 billion in sales in 2013 and account for 10% of the employment in
the state. In 2010, full-service restaurants at all levels spent about $0.32 of each dollar on
the cost of food and beverages, $0.33 on salaries and wages, and between $0.05 and $0.06
on restaurant occupancy costs. The forecast from the National Restaurant Association
projects that the food service operators will buy a record $237.2 billion in food and
beverages from industry suppliers in 2013, an increase from the 2012 Projections of
$225.4 billion. The median income of Louisiana is $40,658.
Louie’s Café’s has a distinctive position in the market as having affordable prices and a
wide variety of menu items, as compared to its competitors. One thing that makes Louie’s
Café unique is that nearly all breakfast, lunch, and dinner items are available 24/7; the only
exception is the biscuit, which customers can only order from 6:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. There
is no seasonality to their menu offering, but they do see an increase in sales during the
winter months. The biggest obstacle Louie’s Café faces in the market is their lack of
parking. Having only four spots available has angered customers in the past and has been
a marketing problem because they do not feel like they can draw customers in without
available parking.
Customers
Because of the proximity to LSU, much of the focus at Louie’s is the student and parent
crowd, who visit when it’s time to move in and out of dorms or apartments, attend
graduation ceremonies, or attend sporting events. During football season, Louie’s sees an
increase in out of town guests who choose to eat here because of the proximity to the
stadium, as well as its reputation. According to the owner Jimmy, majority of their
customer base are students who take advantage of their late night offerings and affordable
prices. With this in mind, we surveyed current and potential customers to see if this was
accurate and to find out how to get it into the potential customers consideration set for
lunch.
Using our primary research, we learned that 67% of customers tend to eat out for lunch at
least once a week. The primary reason for dining out was convenience followed by social
interactions. We also gained a greater insight on the consumer decision-making process.
95% of customers were aware of Louie’s; however, only 55% were familiar with Louie’s
lunch offerings. After learning of this, 65% would consider Louie’s for lunch, which means
Louie’s marketing efforts must be directed to getting into the consumer’s consideration set.
Out of our survey, 78% of people had eaten at Louie’s, but only 8% went during lunch
hours. Lastly, Louie’s has potential to have very loyal customers, with 88% of customers
answering that they would go back. Louie’s customers want convenience, social
interaction, and quality food, and they need a low price for this food and convenience.
Louie’s delivers just that with friendly service, menu variety, affordable prices, and a
convenient location.
The first group of potential customers that Louie’s aims to capture are students who tend to
eat out for lunch in the LSU Area. As of now, their weekday lunch crowd is dismal and
creates a huge opportunity for growth. Louie’s Café is conveniently located within walking
distance of LSU and low prices for the price sensitive students. The second group of
potential customers for Louie’s are alumni and faculty who work in the area. This is an
ideal customer segment for Louie’s because Louie’s college market suffers during the
summer months and winter breaks due to LSU’s class schedule. Additionally, Louie’s is
located less than 2.5 miles away from Downtown Baton Rouge and gives the alumni a
chance to relive their “glory days” during their lunch breaks from work.
Competitors
According to Yelp, there are nearly one thousand restaurants located in Baton Rouge.
Because of the large menu that Louie’s boasts, which includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner,
the owner believes that nearly every restaurant is competition. Louie’s Cafe faces many
potential competitors of restaurants looking to move into the area and food trucks that may
capture some of the late night market. We have broken down the competitors by location,
price, and menu offerings.
Based off our research, 61% already typically dine at restaurants located in the North Gate
area. As of now, there are 22 restaurants located in the Northgate area where Louie’s
resides, and our goal is to capture some of our competitors market and convert the
customers into loyal Louie’s customers. Because it is located in a college town, many
restaurants offer “cheap eats” in order to capture the student market. Yelp has located 159
restaurants in the Baton Rouge area that pride themselves on offering affordable food.
After further research, the only restaurant that we found that was open 24/7 and offered a
full menu was Waffle House and Jack in the Box. However, Louie’s does not believe they
are a significant competitor based on location and quality. One restaurant that the owner
specifically named as a competitor is Another Broken Egg because of its restaurant feel,
breakfast menu offerings, and uniqueness.
Current Marketing
Although the amount of current marketing that Louie’s Café has in place is rather limited,
the value and idea behind additional forms of marketing is understood. With that said, the
most effective form of marketing that the restaurant depends on above all others is word of
mouth. In addition to pushing for more word of mouth marketing and knowledge of
Louie’s restaurant, Louie’s targets several local radio stations to get the word out about
their menu items and low prices. Among these include advertising on Baton Rouge High
School Radio, WBRH, on WKRS radio, and on a radio sports program run nearly every
month. Additionally, Louie’s uses an LSU student media package which runs for a year
including a Reveille print advertising, Tiger TV, a small amount of advertising on KLSU,
and an advertisement in Legacy, which highlight them as a local 24/7 restaurant with
affordable prices. Lastly, Louie’s runs a weekly ad in the Baton Rouge Dig Magazine.
In an attempt to diversify its advertising efforts, Louie’s has a website which includes
information specific to customer service, menu offerings, history, contact information, and
t-shirt and gift card sales. However, the PayPal account link is not set up, the website is not
