Conclusion Rainforest Cafe

The concept of the Rainforest Café is a typical American concept. The American market is ahead in things like experience that is connected with the product, compared to other countries. In the Rainforest Cafe not only the restaurant and bar are themed but also the servings on the menu card and the staff that serves the meals are dressed in a tropical outfit. The concept is now also in countries outside the USA and also different departments of Disneyland have it now. The trend of experiencing and remembering it as a memory is not only a trend in America but also in Europe.

Because of this trend we expect that this concept would also be successful in the Netherlands. Dutch are known for their frugality but considering the decrease of the qualitative leisure time we think that also Dutch people are willing to pay a higher price for this product. In this way valuable leisure time is spent well and a nice memory is kept by visiting the Rainforest Cafe.

Interview manager and customers experiences

1. Manager

Friday the 1st of August we visited the Rainforest Cafe in Tempe. We had made an appointment with the manager, Troy Bear. Mr. Bear is manager of the café since 2004. Before he took the function as a manager at the Rainforest Café, he had been working for several cafés. A training for manager he never had. But with his great experiences, he worked himself up to location manager. In the future Mr. Bear wants to grow even more and become a staff member of the head office of the Rainforest Café.

2. Target group

- Manager
The Rainforest Cafe has no specific target group, they are focused on all kinds of costumers; Family’s with children, the youth, adults, seniors, birthday party’s and group activities. Most of the people that come to the Rainforest Café are family’s with children. People with a specific interest in nature and the rainforest are not a part of the target group. In spite of the prices, a lot of people with lower incomes will eat at the restaurant.

- Costumers
We interviewed different customers from different segments. Part of the interviewed people were families with children, a childeren’s party that was going on, grandparents with grandchildren, teenagers and adults that only visited the café but not the restaurant. The customers each have their own reasons to visit the Rainforest Café. Especially the families with children like the atmosphere and think the experience is the most important. They rather have a dinner at the Rainforest Café than a Happy Meal at McDonalds. The people that we interviewed had a very different way of spending their money. Because of the high prices some of the interviewed didn’t come to the Rainforest often. Others said they liked eating in the restaurant so much that they came more often no matter the price.

3. Service

- Manager
All of the employees are trained before starting there jobs. This will make the service a lot better. We want the costumers to be happy about the service in any possible way. That’s why they are dressed in a certain way. They should always have a smile on there face en they make the costumers happy. We believe that service is very important for the costumers to come back.

- Costumers
Overall the costumers like the way the employees behave. The service is fast, and most of the time the crew will chat with the costumers about the café for a couple of minutes. And the costumers like that. A lot of them are curious about for example the theme of the restaurant.
On the other side, all costumers have said that if it’s a busy night, the service quality goes back. The employees will hurry a lot and not spend too much time on the costumers. But overall the costumers don’t seem to mind.

4. Experience

- Manager
When costumers eat at the Rainforest café the experience is totally different with every other restaurant. The atmosphere is made by the themed surroundings. Through the application of sounds, smells and surroundings of the rainforest it becomes an adventure to eat there and it will be experienced more. ‘We do not use the experience on purpose in our concept, because it actually exists for a couple of years already, but we can see that customers want to experience more when they go out eating’. With this unique concept we try to satisfy our customers so that they will come and visit us more often. Even though the experience factor Mr. Bear thinks that the quality of the food is the most important. ‘The atmosphere can be good, but when the food does not taste good the customers will not return’…

- Costumers
All interviewed persons agree on the fact that a night in the Rainforest Cafe is totally different then in every other restaurant. From the interviews we noticed that some guests especially choose the rainforest Café for a night full of experience with sounds and seeings. This counts especially for families with children and grandparents with grandchildren. They thought the quality of the food was good but was less important than the experience factor.
Other guests thought the atmosphere was good and the food too but did not relate it to experience directly. Thus was said by a young couple.


5. Strong and weak points

- Manager
Mostly Unique Selling Point of the Rainforest Café is the theme and the experience of the customer. Because of this the Rainforest Café separated itself from other restaurants. This is why there are no direct concurrents anymore.

The manager thinks the weak point of the Rainforest Café is the service. On quit days the service is good, but on most days it’s so busy that there is a line of costumers waiting for a table. On such days the pressure on the employees is high, and that’s why the costumers don’t get the service they expect.

- Costumers
Costumers think the theme and ambiance are the strongest points of the restaurant. It’s funny that the costumers think positive about the service, where the manager disagrees with that. On the question if they think the service is not personal enough, they disagree with it, where the manager thinks different about that.


6. Developments

- Manager
With the success they have, the manager thinks the Rainforest Cafe will extend in the future. Not in the restaurants itself, but the number of locations. This you can already notice right now when you look at the increase of locations in Europe. Inside the restaurant the manager doesn’t have a clear image of the future. The concept has already so much experiences that it is ahead of other restaurants. The manager thinks that the quality processing of the service is an important development point for the future.

Marketingmix

P from Product

The Rainforest Café is a thematic café, like the name says, in the ambiance of the rainforest.
In all locations guests walk in through the shop where you can buy shirts, pajamas, picture frames etc. On these products are the animals presented that are also part of the logo; a monkey, an ape, a snake, an alligator, a parrot and a frog.
Through this shop guests will walk easily towards the bar and the restaurant. Here the guests will experience a dinner in the rainforest. Water will come down in a waterfall, on the roof are hanging liana, the crew is dressed in tropical camouflage, there are standing some banana trees and you hear animal sounds all the time. All of this is a part of the decoration of the Rainforest Café. You can also order tropical menus, like a dessert that looks like a volcano.
The rainforest café is part of Laundry’s Restaurant, like more thematic restaurants are.

P from Place

The Rainforest Café is located all over the world, but most of them are located in the United States. They have locations in Canada, England, France, Mexico and Japan.
All locations are located in shopping malls or other big public buildings. This will make it easy for guests to just walk by, or they are shopping in the Rainforest Café and then they will walk to the restaurant.
Every location looks the same, it’s part of the recognition.
The success of the Rainforest Café reveals that they will extend for at least the next couple of years.

P from Price

The Rainforest Café is a relatively expensive product. When you order food or buy something in the store it is pretty expensive. The Rainforest Cafe thinks quality and positive customer experience is very important, and this is the reason why customers pay a higher price. The prices at the Rainforest Café vary between 25 and 30 dollar. Drinks are priced separately, but are included in the children’s meals.

P from People on the job

The staff of the Rainforest Café is dressed according to the theme of the restaurant. This plays an important role in the customer experience and the recognition of the brand.
The Rainforest Café hires their staff by searching on the internet. On the website of the Rainforest Café vacancies are placed so that people who are interested can apply for a certain job. Beside that, sometimes clients that come to the Rainforest Café can apply directly. No further advertisements are placed for this. People who want to apply for a job need to have at least one year experience in this type of work. As soon as the staff is hired, they are trained by taking several courses. These courses relate to the friendly treating of the clients and several courses about how to deal with difficult situations within the company.

P from Promotion

The Rainforest Café is a relatively young product. In the growing phase there has been a lot of attention for the promotion and how to place the Rainforest Café in the market. It was very important that the image matched with the identity of the Rainforest Café.
Due to the popularity of the product there is not a lot of promotion going on at the time. The café has several leaflets that are available inside the cafe. These leaflets are also sent to different schools to reach to most important target group, children. But the most important way of promotion is by word of mouth. This is also one of the biggest reasons why the Rainforest Café doesn’t make much promotion. People often already know the Rainforest Café and because it is often based in popular places such as malls, there are enough people that come to the café.

Goals of the assignment

What we would like to acheive during the assignment, is that we want to learn what the costumers think of the Rainforest Café. Also we’d like to know what the Rainforest Café is doing to make the costumers feel comfortable and exited in a way so they come back.
We are trying to accomplish this by interviewing the manager of one of the restaurants, and also by interviewing some costumers that are eating in the Rainforest Café at the time.
And finally we want to know how the manager and the costumers think about the same topics.

History Rainforest Cafe

The company has received industry recognition for its family-oriented restaurant and themed entertainment achievements. The retail area included in each unit offers items ranging from cooking sauces and personal accessories to children's toys and clothing. A majority of the merchandise carries the Rainforest Cafe brand name. The restaurants are located in the United States and abroad.

The Rainforest Cafe was incorporated in February 1994 by Steven Schussler; Berman led the private stock placement that allowed Schussler to bring his dream into reality. The doors opened for business in October 1994. Within a week the wait for a table was as much as three hours.

The family-oriented Rainforest Cafe operated in a restaurant industry segment dominated by businesses catering to adults, such as the Hard Rock Cafe, which reached the quarter century mark in 1996. Rainforest Cafe liquor sales, for example, were comparatively low. Passersby in the malls could watch the daily on-site educational presentations, which included resident parrots, and an outreach program conducted in schools and for other community groups focused on vanishing habitats and wildlife.

Rainforest Cafe, like the other theme restaurants, drew a horde of customers with the promise of entertainment. Planet Hollywood's Disney store was pulling in more than $40 million a year. Altogether, the restaurant niche reported an estimated half billion dollars a year in sales and was expected to climb to $5 billion by the year 2000, according to a 1996 Star Tribune article by Ann Merrill.

The Rainforest Cafe hoped to build future revenue from its growing children's retail line as well as from added restaurants. Small units outside major tourist areas were being considered for the domestic front, while the company continued to search for high traffic locations overseas. Five exclusive international licensing agreements allowing a total of 24 units were already in place in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Mexico, Canada,and Asia.

Rainforest

Introductie

Dear visitor,

We would like to welcome you to our blog about the Rainforest Cafe. This blog is designed by Irene, Janita, Marina & Myrthe.

During our stay in Arizona in the USA, we choose the Rainforest Cafe as the company to investigate. We decided to go for the Rainforest Cafe because of its exotic appearance and because it is a very populair cafe within the USA.

When coming to the Rainforest Cafe, guests will step into a jungle where they can find all kinds of animals. Not just the environment but also the food itself is a specialty. For example guests can order a dessert in the shape of a volcano with sparkles or they can get an exotic salad.

If you want to experience eating while you are in the jungle, you should come and visit Rainforest Cafe!