Operations Management at Kudler Fine Foods

Kudler Fine Foods is a store unlike any in the grocery industry. Kudler Fine Foods represents a store that could possibly spark a new era within the grocery world. The owner of Kudler Fine Foods, Kathy Kudler, has watched her dream of owning and operating a grocery store that specializes in fine quality food grow within a short period of time. The success of Kudler Fine Foods can be attributed to the innovative ideas, effective leadership, and organizational structure. The overall mission of Kudler Fine Food's "is to provide our customers the finest in selected foodstuffs, wines, and related needs in an unparallel consumer environment. Our selections coupled with our experienced, helpful and knowledgeable staff, merge to offer each customer a delightful and pleasing shopping outing" (Apollo Group, 2003). Kudler has managed to maintain its mission statement by providing its customers with the best and as a result the company has flourished. "Kathy considers one of her key responsibilities to be that of identification of new gourmet items that can be offered in her stores (Apollo Group, 2003)." Therefore, Kathy is considering plans to contract with local growers of organic produce to yet obtain the best in quality products for her consumers and take her business to the next step. If Kathy makes the decision to contract with local growers then changes could be introduced into the company's overall structural organization. Each aspect of Kudler Fine Food's organizational structure from basic business process to the supply chain and quality control process will be affected by the formation of a contractual relationship with local organic growers.

Operations

Business Process/Structure

Each department within Kudler Fine Food's organization implements certain business process with which they conduct their daily business functions. Therefore, some departments within Kudler may experience some process changes if a contractual relationship with local growers were to occur. An area that may receive an increased change in business process would be the legal area. "Kudler uses very few custom forms, preferring instead to use forms (contracts, order forms, etc) that are supplied by the parties the company is dealing with. For example, the leases on the stores were contracts supplied by the lessors. The few customized forms the company uses were obtained from "of-the-shelf" computer programs and slightly modified by Kathy or her assistants" (Apollo Group, 2003). Since Kathy Kudler is the primary legal decision maker, along with counsel from her sister-in-law and lawyer Anne Shousha.