Natalie Ramirez : Chavelas Restaurant
On February 24, 2016 our team, along with Yacanex, visited Chavelas Restaurant to meet with the owner, Jose. Upon our arrival his wife and baby girl greeted us—both very sweet and welcoming to us all!
In our meeting with Jose, we presented our findings from the market analysis we performed the past two weeks. We discussed the location demographics, competitor restaurants, and the customer surveys.
After discussing our market analysis, we opened the conversation to what the future looks like. We began by discussing advertising and marketing. Jose wanted to start a website, which we agreed could best be accomplished by creating a Wix website. Additionally, we agreed that keeping the Facebook up to date with the menu, pictures, promotions, hours of operation, and other details regarding Chavelas is vital in this market. Also, we are going to implement Facebook advertisements that promote to Chavelas' target market. Another marketing option we discussed was a promotional deal for children on the weekends, aiming to bring in families from the soccer games at Washington Elementary. Other ideas were hosting a madre a madre meeting, having a grand re-opening, printing new business cards, getting new banners for the interior and windows, fixing the sign's light out front, updating the sandwich board on the sidewalk, and painting the exterior.
We also discussed setting up a POS system as well as QuickBooks to better and more easily keep track of finances. Interior changes Jose and us would like to see are evening out the floors, moving the salsa bar to the right side wall, removing the whiteboard menu and replacing it with pictures and a nice "Chavelas" design, building a wrap around bar at the back of the restaurant, decorating the walls with authentic Mexican trinkets and pictures, fixing the plumbing in the kitchen, and adding screen doors to both the front and back to allow air circulation while keeping out flies. Yacanex also suggested getting a beer tap for making chavelas drinks.
One thing we would like to do for Jose is print Take Home Menus as well as nice in-house menus, but first Jose needs to establish a more defined menu. He is currently working on configuring a menu based on popularity of items and is also waiting on the alcohol license to determine what drink options he can offer. We are also going to do some research into pricing by looking at the costs to make each menu item as well as do some comparisons to competitors.
Overall, our meeting with Jose this week was vital in moving forward with our projects. Together we brainstormed a lot of ideas that would help the restaurant in its early steps as a business. As we move forward from this meeting our team is now researching what and how we can best accomplish and implement these ideas listed above. This research consists of online research as well as visiting other restaurants to see what concepts we can carry into Chavelas Restaurant. We are all eager and chomping at the bit to start moving forward with these ideas!