Samenvatting

This report is a feasibility study for the start-up of Caribbean Flavors, an online groceries shop. Caribbean Flavors aims to offer Caribbean ingredients and food products to consumers in Spykenisse. Before taking serious steps and opening its store, the company wanted to explore its opportunities and threats, by means of a business plan. The main objectives of this business plan are:
• Presenting a new way to acquire Caribbean food products without necessarily have to leave home.
• Determine the possible success of Caribbean Flavors.
choose to use the niche strategy in combination with an online shop. The product category is tailored to the target group which are inhabitants from the Caribbean and Surinam and products can only be purchase online. Caribbean Flavors investigated whether an online groceries shop, selling Caribbean food products is able to take hold in the online grocery shopping market. After desk research into the popularity of online businesses, especially those selling food and beverages, it can be said that the popularity of buying food and beverages online (grocery shopping) is increasing very fast. In the light of these developments, one can certainly be sure that there is a market for Caribbean Flavors. However, a survey conducted by Caribbean Flavors concluded that online groceries shopping is not popular at all among the inhabitants of Spykenisse, but when asked if they might be willing to do online shopping in a web-toko, 42% of the respondents indicated that they might be willing to do so. This lead us to a next conclusion, that the online grocery shopping market, especially the market for Caribbean food products is still mature since the respondents had no idea about the existence of online toko’s. Furthermore, desk research showed that there is a very low number of competitors online. Given this fact, Caribbean Flavors should definitely create awareness among its customers. This can be achieved by executing good promotional activities through social media and printed media.food shops is very low.
After a conducted desk and field research, Caribbean Flavors was able to determine the best supplier/wholesaler for its products. The South American Food Express BV ( SAFE ) is a customer oriented wholesaler and distributor. They are specialized in exotic South American, African and Caribbean products and have an extensive range of over 2000 quality products. Research was carried out by analysing the internal and external environment of the future company. These analyses showed Caribbean Flavors’ strengths and the possible opportunities for the company in order to achieve the company’s goals. Caribbean Flavors’ weaknesses and threats are highlighted in the SWOT-analysis in the business plan. The internal analysis of the company pointed out Caribbean Flavors strengths, which can be used to compete with its competitors.
Caribbean Flavors’ strengths are:
 Unique selling proposition
 Experience with product purchasing process
 Low cost operations
 Experience with social media
The external analysis showed that the company has five opportunities which it can take it advantages of:
 Low number of competitors
 Increasing popularity of online shopping
 Willingness to buy foreign food products online
 Strong customer base
 Changing eating habits due to multicultural society
According to the market analysis, Caribbean Flavors will be operating in the market of foreign food products. This market is very well represented in the Netherlands as seen in the quantity of local shops, however, the number of online foreign Therefore, Caribbean Flavors