Chocolates El Rey Case
Chocolates El Rey, a medium sized Venezuelan chocolate company, produces top-quality chocolate made with single-origin Venezuelan cocoa beans. Jorge Redmond, the CEO of Chocolates El Rey, called a meeting with senior management in late November 2006 to discuss the company’s growth strategy. El Rey can accomplish this task through many ways; growing the United States industrial market using its own brand name, relocating their plants to low-income countries, or to scale up the retail segment in the United States by using multi-origin cocoa bean chocolate. Each of these viable alternatives to expand El Rey have positive and negative side effects. El Rey has come a long way since its founding in 1929; yet, the …show more content…

This would make it easier for El Rey to expand and also help to solve the problem of using the limited resources of Venezuela. El Rey also needs to create a marketing department, which will help them set up and develop an effective marketing strategy. A major chocolate competitor of El Rey, Nestlé has allocated resources through marketing their products to increase consumer awareness. El Rey is currently in the premium chocolate market, which is a limited market in terms of consumption. In the United States chocolate is consumed by 78% of the population, with only 14% of the consumption being premium chocolates. They should target their marketing plan towards the majority of chocolate consumers, non-premium chocolates in the Unites States. Senior management must decide how to implement these means in order to become a competitive retailer in the United States chocolate market. Many alternatives can be chosen to limit the problems El Rey has encountered to fortify Redmond’s vision, “to build a world-renowned business spanning cocoa production to the marketing of chocolate.”
Some alternatives for expansion can be accomplished by creating a greater focus on the food service sector in Venezuela, followed by expanding into other Latin American countries, and ultimately the United States. El Rey controls 70% of the food services market