Food Services Marketing Plan

Chef Vending

Executive Summary

Introduction
Chef Vending (Chef), LLC is a family start-up business that specializes in importing vending machines and commercial food and beverage equipment from Spain. Chef will penetrate the vending industry with innovative, first to market, high quality vending machines. Chef will establish our own vending routes in the Southern and Central Florida region. Chef also plan to participate in the $321 billion food and beverage industry by supplying high-quality innovative equipment. With the establishment of one strategic alliance with a national brand name in either of their vending lines, Chef expect to easily exceed the financial forecasts.

The Company
Chef Vending's mission is to be the leader in introducing innovative, quality vending machines and restaurant equipment to the market. Through close customer contact and excellent relationships, Chef will meet the needs of the customers.

Chef Vending, LLC, is a privately-held Florida corporation and maintains an office and a small warehouse in a mixed-use area of North Miami Beach, Florida.

Three of the four investors in the company have full operational responsibility. Mauricio Ordonez and Javier Palmera, the co-founders, have both entrepreneurial and industry experience. Charles Mulligan brings operational management, marketing, and financial skills to the operation.

The Products
Chef Vending will have two product lines, each for the various markets it serves. The vending products line will include the unique Sandwich Express machine, a  Fresh Orange Juice machine and the Multi-line Dispenser. The restaurant equipment products will be toasters, espresso makers, and fresh juice squeezers.

Most of the products, such as Sandwich Express are innovative machines that have functions and advantages not found in today's common vending machines, thus providing Chef Vending a competitive advantage over more established competitors.

Chef plans to aggressively enhance the existing line in the future. The immediate plans are to include a larger model of Sandwich Express that will offer a greater variety of sandwiches, and a more diverse product line, such as pizza. Other products are in the exploratory phase.

Chef is also pursuing supplier relationships with large nationally-branded juice and sandwich manufacturers, to customize the machines to their products. This would enable Chef Vending to supply machines to national companies and allow them to brand the machines with their product lines.

The Market
Revenue from U.S. vending consumable merchandise was $24.5 billion in 2002, an increase of 4.9% over 1998, according to the Automatic Merchandiser magazine's State of the Vending Industry Report in August 2000. Small companies, with sales of less than $1 million, accounted for 5.8% of the market and had projected sales for 1999 of $1.35 billion. Three quarters of all vending operators are classified in the small category.

Within the industry, snacks and cold beverages are the largest product segments and these two categories are the driving force of the industry. The food category grew at a rate of 7% last year, according to the Automatic Merchandiser. Cold storage machines grew at an even more impressive 42% in 2001, with this growth coming at the expense of shelf-stable products.

According to the National Restaurant Association, revenues from restaurants are expected to reach $321 billion in 2001. This is a large and healthy industry in our economy, and suppliers to this industry are expected to benefit from this growth.

All of this indicates that a fast moving, innovative company that can introduce enhanced products to vending machine/restaurant equipment customers stand to gain significant market share in a relatively short time span.

Chef Vending will market its machines to three distinct market segments including; distributors, branded sandwich and juice manufacturers, and end users. For the restaurant equipment business Chef will focus on restaurants and hotels and equipment supply companies.

Financial Considerations
The company has an initial start-up cost of approximately $157,000 of which $125,000 will come from a ten year SBA loan. Short-term borrowing will provide Chef with an additional $2,500 and the rest will be provided by investment capital.