Swot Analysis for Custom Coffee & Chocolate

2. Create a SWOT analysis for Custom Coffee & Chocolate.

Based on the SWOT analysis, the strength for Custom Coffee & Chocolate lies in a few key points. First, is the location. In the beginning, Kim and Brewer had a choice of two locations, Pike Place Market and somewhere near a university, in which they picked the latter. The group of customers consist of students, faculty, staff and local residents. As it is situated near the university, it is convenient for the faculty, staff and students from the nearby university to patronize their café for cuppa to perk up their minds.

Custom Coffee & Chocolate has a good reputation among its patrons. As shown in the case, their customers liked their products and return to the café again. They advertised through word by mouth as their customers brought along friends to the café after they have been there previously. This is one of the better ways to advertise as it does not require any advertising cost and it is more trustworthy towards sceptical people as some prefer opinions from people who have tried the things in their café.

Custom Coffee & Chocolate has a distinct product focus which is chocolates and coffee. They serve their customers unique coffee blends and specialty chocolates. Coffee and chocolate lovers will find that place suitable and patronize their café more often.

However, Custom Coffee & Chocolate have some weaknesses such as lack of variety in the menu. It is stated that Custom Coffee & Chocolate only serves unique coffee beverages and fine chocolates. This shows that the customers have very little to choose from as what they have available might not cater to different people who have different taste and this will lead to them getting bored from having the same things there and soon they will stop patronizing their café.

Kim and Brewer proved to have management difficulties in different expects. Based on the financial analysis, they failed to manage their financial accounts. This is shown in the case study, the part where it stated that by the time they decided to take the next step to expand their business, they had exhausted their financial savings and their initial small-business loans, which also means that they have not been making enough profit to sustain the business.

In Human Resource analysis, they did not focus on key human resource activities such as recruitment. Kim and Brewer did not hire extra hands to help run their café and it might be slowing them down when it comes to serving the customers.

Another weakness is lack of advertising. Custom Coffee & Chocolate did not push hard in advertising. They did not invest in any form of advertising program to promote their café and therefore a slow start in business when they first open and might be missing out on making some profit.

Lack of facilities might also be another weakness to Custom Coffee & Chocolates. It is stated in the case study that their café is small and only have several furniture and free newspaper reading material. All these are not enough to encourage the customers to stay as at this age and technology, most café provides wifi services in which they did not provide and therefore leading to their customers to opt for take outs instead of spending more time there.

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