Marketing plan for The Gril-Kleen Corp

For this case study, I want you to create a mini, 1.52-page marketing plan for The Gril-Kleen Corporation. It should follow the same guidelines outlined for the marketing plan section of your business plans
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.CASE 8 THE GRIL-KLEEN CORPORATION Well, where do I begin? Warren Ryan wondered as he surveyed the chaos before him. Boxes and bottles were piled all over the place, invoices and order forms cluttered the desktop and filled the drawers, and he couldnt seem to locate anything resembling an orderly set of books. It was spring of 2010, and just a few days earlier Ryan had quit his job with a large management consulting firm to assume the presidency of Gril-Kleen Corporation and help get the young company off the ground. The companys efforts to market its innovative product, a liquid restaurant grill cleaner, had been extremely successful. Ryan felt that with a professional marketing approach, the product could capture a sizable share of a national market. The product, a chemical solution that could be applied directly to a working grill to clean off burnt-on food and accumulated grease in a matter of minutes, represented a significant departure from the existing methods of cleaning restaurant grills. It appeared to have several major advantages over competing products, and initially it had generated such enthusiastic response from users that the product had practically sold itself.
PRODUCT EVOLUTION Gril-Kleen had been developed for their own use by two brothers who owned a small, busy restaurant in Eastern Massachusetts. The restaurants grill needed cleaning Page 494 several times a day, especially during busy periods, and the brothers were disturbed by the amount of time and effort it took to clean the grill. They were also bothered by the orders they lost while the grill was being cleaned. Most grill-cleaning products then available could not be used on a hot grill, and the time required to cool, clean, and then reheat the grill varied from about 20 minutes to almost an hour, depending on the method being used and the condition of the grill. Two of the most popular methods of cleaning grills used a carborundum stone or a wire mesh screen to scrub the grill clean. Though inexpensive, they required a great deal of physical labor and both products tended to wear, with some danger of stone chips or metal particles ending up in food cooked on the grill. Spray foam oven-cleaner type products, similar to those sold for home use, were easier to use but considerably more expensive. Most had critical effective temperatures of around 160200 Fahrenheit, compared to normal grill operating temperatures of around 3508, and often had objectionable odors, which restricted their use in small or poorly ventilated restaurants. Dissatisfied with the products then on the market, the two brothers decided to develop their own grill cleaner. They sought the advice of one of their customers in the chemical business, and from him they learned about some chemicals and began to experiment with different combinations in various proportions. The cleaner they sought would clean grills quickly, easily, and at normal operating temperature. It had to be economical, easy to mix, and have no discernible odor or taste, and it would have to pass safety requirements (i.e., be both nontoxic for use on food preparation surfaces and noncaustic to the users skin). In addition, it had to leave the grill seasoned so that food wouldnt stick to the grill after it had been cleaned. After experimenting and modifying the solution for a couple of years, the brothers finally arrived at a mixture having all the desired properties. It would work on both hot and cold grills, and the grill operator could clean a grill in less than five minutes by simply pouring the solution on, allowing it to dry, and then rinsing the grill with water. After a light seasoning with cooking oil, the grill was ready for use again. Soon, friends in the restaurant business heard about the product and began asking for samples, then coming back for more. As demand increased, the brothers started to sell the product by the gallon, charging whatever they felt the market would bear.
THE GRIL-KLEEN CORPORATION The product appeared to be so successful that the brothers began to think about marketing it on a larger scale. One of the restaurants customers, a line foreman for a Boston electric Company, was impressed by the demand for the product, and urged the brothers to consider manufacturing and selling it on a regular basis. In early 2007, the three of them formed the Gril-Kleen Corporation. Working out of the basement of the restaurant, the three new partners bottled and sold Gril-Kleen in their spare time and on their days off. The chemicals were mixed in a large plastic tub with a spigot, then transferred to gallon-size plastic bottles labeled Gril-Kleen. On Tuesdays, when the restaurant was closed, the two brothers made sales calls to other restaurants, leaving behind samples of the product. Even with this minimal sales effort, orders began to increase to the point where larger facilities were needed to bottle and store the product. Less than a year after its incorporation, the Gril-Kleen Corporation moved to a new and larger headquarters in a nearby industrial park. The new plant was a 1,500-square-foot cinderblock building, and the equipment consisted of a large stainless steel tub, formerly used for pasteurizing milk and capable of producing 450 gallons of Gril-Kleen per day. The company hired one part-time employee to mix the chemicals and fill the bottles. After one unfortunate experience with a traveling salesman who offered to sell the product and instead, sold several phony exclusive distributorships for Gril-Kleen throughout New England before he disappeared, the company established relationships with half a dozen bona fide distributors of restaurant and cleaning supplies in New England. As sales volume grew, the need for a full-time manager became increasingly apparent. Orders and invoices were piling up, billing was haphazard, records were disorganized and incomplete. With no regular system of record-keeping, orders often went unfilled, or customers were never billed for orders that had been shipped. Recognizing that the company had grown too large to continue operating on a one-day-per-week basis, the owners hired a local politically ambitious individual to run the company, and offered him a 25 percent interest in the business. The new partner was well known locally, had a number of important connections, and the company owners felt that his name would lend some prestige to the operation. Page 495 As it turned out, he devoted little of his time and attention to running the business and most of it to campaigning for re-election, even charging some of his campaign expenses to the company. After more than a year, with company sales declining, the other three partners bought him out, paid his bills, and returned to running the business on their days off.
WARREN RYAN At this point, Warren Ryan, a management consultant working on an assignment nearby, began patronizing the restaurant and became friendly with the owners. When he learned of the situation at Gril-Kleen, he suggested that the company hire his consulting firm to do a market study and map out an operating and marketing plan for the company. He also recommended that they utilize his firms Executive Search service to find a new president for Gril-Kleen. Reluctant to deal with a large consulting firm or to hire anyone they didnt know to run the company, the brothers asked Ryan if he would take over the job himself. Ryan, an MBA with extensive experience in marketing, advertising, and industrial management, was intrigued by the idea. He had grown up in a household with a small, family-owned business, and had long been interested in applying his management and marketing skills to running a company. He agreed to consider the offer, and then began to research the product and its market. From library sources, he estimated the national restaurant cleaning market at about $80 million a year, and learned that no single company held a dominant share of the market. From experience with the product and interviews with current users of Gril-Kleen, he became convinced of Gril-Kleens performance superiority over competing products. Moreover, he was impressed by the apparent success of the company despite the lack of good planning, and concluded that the product could be developed successfully. After serious consideration and considerable research, he decided to accept the offer, and in April 2010 became the new president of the Gril-Kleen Corporation.
THE SITUATION IN EARLY 2010 When Ryan took over, he found the product being manufactured in the small, one-story cinderblock plant in Hingham. The companys one part-time employee could mix and bottle up to 200 gallons a day to meet orders, and plant capacity could easily be increased by buying a larger mixing tank and hiring more labor. It was also possible to rent additional floor space if necessary. The product was packaged in cases of four (4) one-gallon-size plastic containers. It was sold for $28 a case retail, $18 a case wholesale, F.O.B. the wholesalers warehouse. Included with each case was a 16-ounce squeeze-type plastic applicator bottle. Sales volume at the time was approximately $35,000 a year. The average usage rate was approximately one case per month. The companys primary customers were six wholesale distributors in Massachusetts: two of these were suppliers of cleaning and chemical products to restaurants, one was a paper products distributor, another one sold restaurant equipment, one sold janitorial supples to hotels and motels, and the last one sold food products and supplies to theaters. Ryan found few records, little financial data, and no regular flow of paperwork within the company. Prices were based on those charged for a competitive product, with no regard…