It is important to say that before the start of the pilot project, a media-
campaign was launched to present the project to wider public and to invite
them to test the first “Srdela Snack” restaurant. The campaign included articles
in national and local newspapers, interviews and TV appearances by project
leaders.
Consumers expressed their satisfaction with food and service in the
restaurant, their pattern of buying behavior for fish was examined and they
stated their impressions and suggestions regarding the idea of franchised fish
fast- food outlets. Some of the questions had to be answered on a five- point
Likert- type scale but most of the other questions were open- ended, since we
wanted to gather qualitative responses that would describe consumer
experiences in the first restaurant of this franchise.
Fishermen, entrepreneurs and restaurant owners from all over Croatia were
also invited to visit the test project and they were also interviewed.
Results and discussion
The analysis of sales in the first outlet of “Srdela Snack” franchise showed that
the number of meals sold daily varied between 37 and 125, with daily average
of 70 meals sold. These data must be compared with sales in the previous
years when the test- restaurant sold Italian food (mostly pizza). The average
daily turnover in the same period of previous year was 300 kuna 1, while in the
test- period the daily average amounted to 1045 kuna which shows that the
income has more than tripled. Break- even analysis showed that 80 meals a day
guarantees a profit for the outlet.
The structure of turnover shows that the most popular product was the
sardine meals (41%) followed by tuna meals (25%), while 17% of the turnover
came from wine sales.
1 1 euro = 7.3 kuna