Crumbs bakeshop

CRUMBS BAKE SHOP AFFILIATION: The aim of this paper is to address the philosophy, marketing strategy, and environmental analysis of Crumbs Bake Shop. The bakery chain initiated in 2003 as a mom-and-pop style bakery and now has its outlets in more than 75 locations across eight states of US (Randazzo, 2014). This paper addresses the business philosophy, strengths, weaknesses, current operations, wrong decisions, and recommendations for Crumbs Bake Shop.
Crumbs Bake Shop’s Philosophy
The philosophy of Crumbs Bake shop is to develop intense emotional connection with customers. The management endeavours hard to stick on this philosophy and develop strong relationship with its customers (Lattman, 2011). Due to this philosophy Crumbs Bake Shop is successfully increasing its customers and is becoming a respected and recognized brand of US.
Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy of Crumbs Bake Shop consist on internet, radio, television and newspaper advertisement along with in-store efforts. Crumbs invests sufficient amount of money for its promotion, brand differentiation, and brand recognition. Crumbs believes that it is the leader in the market of gourmet cupcakes and makes every possible steps to market itself as perfect store of choice for delicious and attractive cupcakes (Randazzo, 2014).
Environmental Analysis
CULTURE: USA is a multicultural state but all its cultures love baked products and this is one of the reasons of Crumbs Bake Shop’s success. People of US likes delicious backed products of Crumbs Bake Shop and by fulfilling customers’ demands the company is successfully growing.
SOCIETY: The western society is food loving society especially backed food. The society demands cupcakes and other bakery items and Crumbs Bake Shop knows how to meet customers’ changing demands (Moyer, and Sullivan, 2014). High consumption of bakery food by US’s society creates more opportunities for Crumbs Bake Shop.
Strengths
One of the greatest strengths of Crumbs Bake Shop is its wide variety of cupcakes. It offers more than 50 different types of cupcakes to its customers (Peterson, 2014). The irresistible and delicious items in its menu delight customers and are one of the main reasons for customer retention. Another strength of Crumbs is its online availability; anyone can buy cupcakes from Crumbs Bake shop online.
Weaknesses
The major weakness of the company is its limited cash reserves. A growing food chain requires extensive amount of money to meet the expenses but unavailability of cash creates problems for the company. Increasing of too many retail shops within short time period and poor management policies are also a weakness of Crumbs Bakes Shop (Maltby, and Needleman, (2013). Excess growth and shortage of cash reserves shows mismanagement which need serious consideration.
Recommendations
After the period of slow growth and closure of some stores Crumbs Bake Shop is now improving its cash reserves process and reopening its stores. The decision of reopening its stores is right because by reopening and improvement the company can generate more profits and can get its position back. Many economists argue that Crumbs should not expand too quickly and its expansion in very short time is a wrong decision taken by the management. In order to sustain its profitability and operations Crumbs should retain sufficient amount of cash and should pay proper attention to all its stores. Crumbs should increase its marketing efforts to aware customers about its reopening and it should invest some money to improve brand’s image.
References
Lattman, P., (2011), Cupcake Bakery to Go Public in Merger, The New York times
Peterson, H., (2014), Crumbs Is Reopening Stores Next Week — Heres What Will Be Different, Business Insider.
Randazzo, S.,(2014), Crumbs Bake Shop to Reopen Stores After Court Approval. The Wall Street Journal.

Maltby, E., and Needleman, S. E., (2013), Forget Gold, the Gourmet-Cupcake Market Is Crashing, The Wall street journal.
Moyer, J., and Sullivan, G., (2014) July, Crumbs, the cupcakery that couldn’t, closes up shop, The Washington Post.