Boomin’ Brands Inter-organizational Relationships

Boomin’ Brands Inter-organizational Relationships Essay Prompt

This section should include a proposal of at least 2 inter-organizational relationships (i.e., partnerships), each with a different stakeholder group. Each relationship should tie to one of the strategies proposed in PR 4, and this should be explicitly stated. You must include the name of a specific company or organization you plan to partner with. Each relationship should be specific and actionable.

Portfolio of Brands:

• Brand #1: Outback Steakhouse

  • Outback Steakhouse was the first restaurant that opened in March 1988 in Tampa, Florida, under Bloomin’ Brands (Our Company, n.d.). The brand features Australian-spirited casual dining restaurants which offer various menu options like steaks, chops, chicken, seafood, pasta, salads, and seasonal specials (D&B Hoovers, n.d.). Outback Steakhouse is now known as the “company’s largest and most recognizable restaurant concept” (D&B Hoovers, n.d.). The business strategy used is Best-value, serving quality steaks at affordable value to the customers.

• Brand #2: Carrabba’s Italian Grill -

  • Carrabba’s Italian Grill is a casual establishment under Bloomin’ Brands. The brand features Italian-spirited casual dining restaurants, preparing authentic Italian cuisines like Italian fare, steaks, and chops (D&B Hoovers, n.d.). This brand is specifically “characterized by a contemporary atmosphere” (D&B Hoovers, n.d.). The brand's business strategy is Best-value as well, serving high-quality authentic Italian dishes at a reasonable value for its customers.

• Brand #3: Bonefish Grill

  • Bonefish Grill is known as a brand that specializes in fresh-market fish from around the world. The business-level strategy used by the brand is Differentiation. The brand offers exceptional seafood quality and prices that can change daily. In addition, Bonefish Grill offers seasonal fish dishes originating from around the world (D&B Hoovers, n.d.). Though an upscale casual eatery, the brand also offers beef and chicken entrees (D&B Hoovers, n.d.).

• Brand #4: Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar

  • The brand specializes in contemporary fine dining restaurants, a contemporary interpretation of a classic American steakhouse (D&B Hoovers, n.d.). Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar features dishes like “prime cuts of beef, chops, chicken, seafood and poultry, salads and side dishes” (D&B Hoovers, n.d.). The business-level strategy used by the brand is Differentiation. The brand differs by serving an “award-winning list of wines and local seasonal menus” (D&B Hoovers, n.d.).

• Brand #5: Aussie Grill

  • Aussie Grill is a brand that specializes in fast-casual dining experiences and takes pride in preparing meals in under 4 minutes (Our story, n.d.). They take pride in their bold flavours inspired by Outback Steakhouse (Our story, n.d.). The brand's business strategy is Low-cost; Aussie Grill continues to produce an “unmatched variety and quality” of menu items at a low cost (Our story, n.d.).

•  Brand #6: Abbraccio Cucina Italiana

  • As part of Bloomin’ Brands International, Abbraccio Cucina Italiana restaurants specialize in authentic Italian cuisine and a casual dining atmosphere. In fact, it was inspired by the concept of Carrabba’s Italian Grill and is the second international concept launched by Bloomin’ Brands International (International franchise opportunity, n.d.). The business level strategy used by the brand is Best-value. Abbraccio Cucina Italiana serves high-quality Italian dishes using family recipes and fresh ingredients, a blend of the menu with Carrabba’s Italian Grill (International franchise opportunity, n.d.).

SWOT Analysis:

SWOT Summary:

The strengths of Bloomin’ Brands are providing various quality food options and outstanding customer service with a relaxed atmosphere. These success elements associated with the company target both families and general consumers. Also, Bloomin’ Brands are customer-friendly to guests who are vegan, vegetarian, or allergic to specific ingredients based on customized food choices. On the other hand, free training lessons for employees to improve their skills is one of the company's strengths. Bloomin’ Brands offers employee insurance, free or discounted meals and a health care-on restaurant or onsite. The company’s stakeholders will not have to worry about high insurance charges and be able to achieve future career success through company training programs. Those benefits provided by Bloomin’ Brands help to maintain talented employees and keep employees’ loyalty with a low turnover rate. Besides, the company has a digital innovation team to drive more customers to the restaurants. It is a way of satisfying the customer’s needs to build a strong relationship and increase food sales by using eCommerce websites. The company can reduce food waste and create seasonal or new menu items by looking at customers’ dish preferences from the digital innovation team’s data. 

The weakness of Bloomin’ Brands is profitability - it is considerably lower than its competitors. The company’s financial growth is stable, and can pay short-term debts. However, Bloomin’ Brands is lower on average net profit margin and current ratio than other competitors. Besides, David Deno is the CEO of Bloomin’ Brands. He has more than 15 years of experience in finance and operation positions, but he only has 2 years experience with Bloomin’ Brands, which may mean his decision-making process might compete with other stakeholders. It is necessary to build strong relationships with the staff and suppliers to maintain team trust and loyalty. Another weakness is that products and services are not unique from other competitors. For the company to become outstanding in the restaurant industry, special attention is needed to create seasonal menu items and determine the majority of customers’ food preferences. Kindly ask guests to complete dining experience surveys through innovation and technology implementation will become a competitive advantage for Bloomin’ Brands to move forward.

The opportunity for Bloomin’ Brands is to introduce new and healthier dishes. To enlarge the customer demographic, Bloomin’ Brands releases dishes that combine plant-based menu items to satisfy the demand. At the same time, the idea also satisfied customers who cared about sustainability within the business. The society trend is changing to prefer diet and healthy options. Customers are more likely to purchase or consume healthy food. On the other hand, installing self-service technology can increase service flexibility and efficiency. Ordering food on touch-screen kiosks helps the company collect data on customers’ average spending and reduces waiting time for service requests from the server. To provide employees with a safe working environment, Bloomin’ Brands offers training courses on sexual harassment, drug abuse, stealing and health violations. The employees are responsible for protecting themselves and reporting sexual harassment situations in the workplace. 

The threats of Bloomin’ Brands would be time and money consumed while promoting plant-based menu items in international segments. The plant-based menus are popular nowadays; however, developing a new dish and upselling might take about 2 to 3 years to see the results. On the other hand, the setup and maintenance for the self-ordering machine or table tablet are expensive. The company needs to consider the risk of inability to return on investment. When the machine breaks down, it is possible to lose customers’ personal information and company data. If the training program does not train properly or ignores certain conduct, which leads to costly and legal claims, this would result in unsatisfactory employee rates and reviews. It will end up with a high turnover rate and staff shortage. 

            Regarding the strategies used to implement the SWOT analysis, the following elements are paired to provide realistic and suggestive strategies to overcome the value of each section. For the S-O strategy, focusing on Bloomin’ Brand's strengths and opportunities, it would be best to promote digital innovation to strive for more revenue and an influx of customer appeal. As the brand has a digital innovation team, it would be beneficial to utilize it to develop new concepts and ideas to bring in more service through what is trending in the digital world via QR codes or social media. Another strategy would be to provide free online training programs that are easily accessible for all employees anywhere in the world. Doing so can benefit both the employees and the brand by ensuring employees are properly trained and receive a reward for their efforts. The innovation team can incorporate the training program through a link or QR code within the Human Resources handbook during training so employees can have direct access to the program website. 

The W-O strategy utilizes the brand’s weaknesses and opportunities to reinforce some strengths that can be used to help further assist the company. One strategy would be to provide trendy and healthy dishes to promote market activity and revenue. Not only will this appeal to a wide range of market consumers, but it will also make the brand seem new and appealing by incorporating inclusivity in its marketing approach. Providing healthy meals does not mean they need to seem bland or boring, by providing a new perspective on healthy meals by making them seem appealing, vibrant and fresh can help further increase revenue sales while introducing new and healthier options within the company. Another strategy would be to provide online training through free meeting programs such as zoom, Webex, google meet, etc. In doing so, meetings can be held anywhere and are freely accessible. Due to the lack of firm-employee relations, the CEO can personally interact with the employees through the online meeting platform to discuss more the company and how the employees are an important part of the team by making them feel valued and needed for increasing work morale and quality. 

For the S-T strategy, the brand will stress the importance of proper training through multiple training incentives and reward each session with benefits such as insurance, health care, and other positive elements. The employee will apply their skills by taking a short quiz after each training session and receive a certificate that needs to be signed by management personnel to confirm and verify that the employee did indeed learn and apply the information. Once acknowledged, employees can receive their benefits as a reward and will continue to have this type of training monthly to ensure consistency and effectiveness over time. Another strategy would be to utilize the digital innovation team to promote plant-based menu items with free services and programs to save on expenses while still providing visibility to its market. Utilizing social media is a great way to provide word-of-mouth skills to spread information further and promote the company. Providing a free QR code incorporated in menus to feature promotional items would be another way to increase revenue or utilise recycled materials and stamps to create flyers and posters by saving time, energy and money overall as a whole. The brand can also promote using recycled materials to help the environment and appeal to new groups. By understanding the brand’s strengths and threats, we can use the brand’s strengths and team to create new ideas and concepts to diminish the financial, economic, and timely threats. 

For the W-T strategy, the brand can train employees to upsell alcohol and products when serving guests at restaurants. One of the brand's main weaknesses is low profitability, and a threat is not being able to train the employees properly. By having a solid and consistent training program, the brand can incorporate the concept and importance of upselling to increase revenue while at the same time ensuring proper training by making sure employees want to learn about the company and what benefits they can receive, such as a rewards incentive. The brand can promote an employee of the month award for the individual that can upsell the most items by the end of the month, increasing the motivation and effort of the employees in return for any bonus pay or other incentives. Another strategy would be to have the CEO personally attend in-person training sessions, as one of the brand's weaknesses is a low firm-employee relationship. Without this relationship, it is difficult for employees to maintain morale and motivation as it seems like the company does not care about their employees individually. By having a proper firm-employee relationship, the CEO can listen to the needs and requests of his employees and show his dedication to his team. The CEO can also provide a backstory on his company to the employees and why he started it in the first place by providing his mission, vision and objective statements. Have the CEO train the employees in a group session when he can and have a step-by-step guide on how certain systems work to help employees understand how legal claims can affect both the company and its employees. Provide a personal relationship with each individual to create a sense of inclusivity by reestablishing trust through the brand’s mission and vision. 

In conclusion, these strategies can be utilized to help view each section as an improvement for the brand. By providing ideas and suggestions to tackle each weak point in the sections of the SWOT analysis, the company can focus on areas that need more attention and apply them to benefit the brands. 

Strategic Recommendations:

Business Level Strategies 

1. Reduce food wastes

• We can work on increasing sustainability in our business by implementing a food waste reduction system like reduce-reuse-recycle systems, pulper systems, food digester systems and garbage disposal systems. These systems will help our business become more sustainable with how we get rid of the food scraps from our kitchen. We can successfully implement this by conducting detailed research on its benefits and potential risks. Also, by giving detailed and hands-on training to our employees on how to utilize these systems and carry them out constantly.

2. Implementation of interactive self-service technology

• The company will work on the implementation of the latest technology in restaurants to provide enjoyment and convenience to customers. According to a study in the field, customers are demanding more self-service attributes to the casual and fine dining experience (Xu & Baiomy, 2021). We can achieve that by installing self-service kiosks and contactless payment devices on the tables. The implementation of the self-service attributes will allow us to improve operational efficiency.

Corporate Level Strategies

1.  Rebranding of companies as having a greener focus

• Bloomin’ brands will steer toward rebranding the company as that one that makes every reasonable effort to ensure green processes. We want the market to know about our mission and efforts to go green and be completely transparent in doing so to earn the public's trust. We will do this by ramping up our marketing efforts to reflect our commitment to sustainability and the environment and will make it known at each location what efforts were taken to minimize our carbon footprint.

2. Expansion to Novel Markets

• Bloomin' should also expand its footprint in new geographical markets from the following perspective. It should incorporate market development tactics by opening novel subsidiaries in different regions, amplifying market reach and augmenting sales revenues (Verhoeven & Johnson, 2017). Reputed well-established restaurants, including Darden and Brinker, have 1,835 and 1,500 brick-and-mortar stores, while Bloomin' owns 1,200 hotels globally. The minimum global coverage relative to rivals impedes the firm from maximizing its sales revenues by serving a broader market. Furthermore, Bloomin' brands should venture into other international emerging markets rather than concentrating its restaurants in the United States since developing nations with mounting economic growth heighten consumers' purchasing power parity and provide lucrative growth opportunities. Therefore, Bloomin's corporate-level strategy should expand to new markets to buttress market share and outstrip competitors.