Nordsee – the Different Fast Food Restaurant

Summarizing the facts

As Slovakia becomes an integrated European country, it is increasingly involved in globalization. As a result, many foreign citizens, Slovak business people, and professionals come especially to Bratislava for investment or for other reasons and obviously, as they spend more time in town, there is a higher demand for good quality restaurants.Nordsee is a non- traditional fast food restaurant; it offers quality sea food with self- service. Moreover, a part of the restaurant is a snack-bar for the busier people or for students and there also exists a sea-food store with delicate and fresh sea specialties for the more demanding customers. Nordsee is a German company which was established in 1896. Originally, it was a small firm that consisted of 7 steam boats and was fishing all kinds of sea-food in order to sell it in its own store as fresh as possible.

Nowadays, this company is Europe’s No. sea-food restaurant with stores all over Germany (364 restaurants combined with snack-bars and stores), Austria and Switzerland due to its 100 years of know-how, its technology, and its outstanding product quality.

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State the problem/opportunity

Other fast-food chains have already entered the Slovak market and did very well, as for instance McDonald’s or Pizza Hut. However, Nordsee differs a lot from these traditional high-sugar, high-fat burgers and low-carb pizzas. Its meals are very healthy, tasty, and even suitable for vegetarians.It these days, more and more people care about their weight and their lifestyle, and Nordsee can certainly help to reduce the people’s weight and to stay in shape. The main dishes in the restaurant are for instance salmon, shrimps, and many different kinds of sea-fishes, squid or lobster for attractive prices combined with salads, potatoes or soups and sauces.

Slovakia represents a good opportunity for Nordsee to expand to Eastern Europe. It provides low labor-cost and a still rather open market.The target market would be students (snack-bar), labor, professionals or business people (self-service restaurant), and the gourmets (store). The probably biggest problem would be the relatively high prices for the top-quality sea food and the competition from other already existing fast food restaurants. Analyze the

Causes of the problems

• Problem No. 1: Relatively High Prices of the Products

This is certainly true if we are speaking about top-quality lobster or salmon. But there are also other, cheaper products in the self-service store or in the snack-bar, as a part of a restaurant. As you can see there is a wide range of many different products and therefore of many pricing levels from cheap to affordable, but of top quality. An average salmon sandwich with salad and a tasty herb-sauce would probably cost just as much as a high-fat McRoyal. Which one would you chose?

• Problem No. 2: Competition

Obviously there are already fast-food restaurants or baguetterias, but they offer almost no variety and they are incomparable with a Nordsee restaurant, as you sit down in a nice atmosphere and you eat the dishes with knife and fork, and not with your bare hands.You can also have a special fish-soup or a salad with shrimps if you chose to. It is a self-service restaurant; therefore, it wouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to eat a full meal. It would be completely innovative and that is why there would be no real competition in that sense.

Of course it would be necessary to open such a store in some shopping center or in the city center of Bratislava where there are many potential customers located.

Alternative solutions

Nordsee opens its own store in Bratislava and if it approves, other stores can be opened in Banska Bystrica or Kosice.

• Strenghts: Over 100 years of know-how, technology, excellent product quality
• Weaknesses: It is a German company and it does not completely know how to operate in Eastern Europe (lack of knowledge and experience)
• Opportunities: Number 1 self-service restaurant with sea-food in Slovakia
• Threats: Competition, too high prices for Slovak market

Franchising strenghts

Low risk-taking for Nordsee, other Slovak entrepreneurs invest their money and have better know-how of their domestic market

• Weaknesses: Nordsee has to provide them with their technology, their expertise and product supplying
• Opportunities: Nordsee receives payment from Slovak entrepreneurs and without much risk-taking it can become leading fast-food restaurant
• Threats: Entrepreneurs can stay profitless, Nordsee Company may have therefore damaged reputation, it can no more expand successfully on its own to other Eastern European countries . Slovak entrepreneurs open a similar store with other brand name on their own
• Strenghts: They do not have to pay Nordsee for franchising; they do not have to obey the standards and orders from Nordsee (independence)
• Weaknesses: They might not have the required equipment and know-how
• Opportunities: Opening a similar store but with a different product line and therefore a different, eventually lower pricing
• Threats: Competition from other, already existing fast-food chains, which are more organized and already experienced

Recommended solution

Franchising would probably be the most suitable choice in order to successfully expand to Slovakia. It would be inevitable to go to Nordsee headquarter in Germany to have a negotiation with the suitable persons to ask for a license to distribute their products and to receive their technology for the preparation of their food.

After their agreement, it is necessary to pay for this license and for the equipment for the stores, as they are standardized and are therefore almost identical in every location. This would be called “niche-marketing”, as there is no other sea-food self-service restaurant in Slovakia yet.Justification and Evaluation: Franchising would be the most effective choice, as I have worked out the 4 P’s (marketing mix):

• Product: Sea-food (fish specialties, shrimps, soups, salads, etc. )
• Price: In a similar range as already existing fast-food restaurants in Slovakia (e. g. McDonald’s)
• Promotion: Advertising through TV-spots (depending on the extent of the promotion budget), billboards, flyers, free samples in the stores within the first week of the opening, newspapers, magazines, fitness centers, etc.
• Place: Bratislava’s city center, shopping malls, etc.

To sum up, Nordsee has an enormous potential in Eastern Europe, especially Slovakia through franchising. It is evident that it would certainly do quite well under such conditions especially in Bratislava. There are still no, or just very few, good restaurants with high-quality food where you can eat within a few minutes. There would also be special offerings for small children with an exceptional dish with a little toy (such as the “Happy Meal” in McDonald’s stores).As you can see, the potential market is wide-spread and I am positive that Nordsee would definitely be a good alternative to all the fat pizzas and burgers that we all weekly consume with disregard to our health.

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