Caffe Bene: Creating Values for Customers

Caffe Bene, one of the most notable coffeehouse chain brands in Republic of Korea, gives us some thought-provoking issues in terms of sustainable success. Despite harsh competition among various coffeehouse brands, Caffe Bene has been accomplished astonishing outcomes in domestic market and now ranked 2^nd place in sales among the global coffeehouse franchise in 2010 and 2011. These achievements were possible mainly because Caffe Bene adopted distinctive shop design, maintained aggressive marketing strategy, developed new menu, and combined the unique Korean culture with ordinary concept of café to make its place attractive. However, since Korean coffeehouse market is getting saturated and consumers are becoming savvy about coffee, Caffe Bene needs to find a new solution to overcome growth stagnation. Besides, many experts pointed out that irrational increase in the number of stores might hurt its business in the aspect of managing distribution channel and providing consistent services. Also, customers of Caffe Bene have shown that it has to complement its critical weaknesses: inferior coffee taste and relatively high price for a cup of coffee. Especially, some people view that the company is shifting its high rental fee, interior cost and PPL marketing cost to consumers by charging high price for coffee. To get over the problems, Caffe Bene is currently using C/S Consumer Management System though experts are questioning about the efficacy because of the conflict between purpose of the system and the headquarters' plan. Present CEO Kim also announced that the company will complete its logistics system in the latter half of 2012 to provide stores with more high quality coffee beans to improve taste of coffee. Thus, in this case, we describe how Caffe Bene succeeded in Korean market and enumerate its key success factors. Also, we specify the long-term goals of Caffe Bene and introduce the current policies and strategies to show how the company is working on to achieve its ultimate goal. By reading and analyzing this business case, students could get useful insights regarding franchise management and think about issues on competing in a saturated market. Also, it would be worthwhile to generate creative solutions for the problems that Caffe Bene is now facing to broaden the practical perspective.