The target market for Food Cheri reflected by this promotion is clear: working professionals who do not prepare their lunch at home. In April, during several working days, representatives of Food Cheri were handing out these carton promotions. Judging by the question on the front of the promotion (What are we eating for lunch today?), the company’s goal is to target professionals who have to decide everyday where they will eat and to convert them to Food Cheri. The company is strictly focused on the lunch rush in order to get the highest revenues without the costs associated with keeping the business open all day. The initial incentive is 10 EUR off the first order. If the client is interested, they turn the promotion over to see how they can get their discount.
Once on the back, the company continues to convince the potential customer by explaining that their food is prepared in house with local and bio products. Giving the client an extra reason to order from Food Cheri besides the monetary incentive is important because the potential customer then reads the fine print stating that the 10 EUR discount is only valid on orders of 15 EUR or more. At this point, the customer is likely thinking that 15 EUR is significantly more than they are willing to pay for a meal. However, if they can get two for 15 EUR, it would only cost them 5 EUR in the end for both and is still worth it. Other customers who are less driven by the monetary aspect will likely decide that it would still be interesting to order in order to see how good and healthy the product that Food Cheri is selling actually is. In any case, this is a rather successful promotion if the goal is to get initial tries. Yet, this is not all that it takes to develop a loyal customer base.
I tested out the product and, while tasty, the portions are far too small to be worth seven to nine Euros. Moreover, the company seems to be unable to handle the IT portion of the business. The first (and only) time that I ordered with Food Cheri, I had some difficulties in being able to actually finalize my order because the online form did not recognize that I had in fact entered my phone number. Next, I was interested to see how their free meals Tuesdays worked so I followed the instructions online: one Tuesday at exactly 10 am, I was on the site ready to claim my free meal. Unfortunately, the site crashed because of too much traffic to the site. The second time, I managed to get to the site and actually add the product to my cart, however when I clicked on my cart, the item was not there. Finally, I tried one last time (third time’s the charm right?) and I managed to get the item in my cart but it the page crashed at the checkout process. In the end, these IT difficulties are either a great way to get out of the promotion promise that they had made or simply a genuine lack of IT skills. In any case, the customer service at each encounter was rather bad and I do not expect this company to last long at this rate.
Have you tried Food Cheri? What was your experience?