Kudler Fine Foods Case Study
Strategy
Kudler Fine Foods is a local gourmet food store company in the San Diego metropolitan area. The company is founded a few years ago by President Kathy Kudler and has three stores located in La Jolla, Del Mar and Encinitas. Kathy Kudler's vision is "to create one store that would stock a wide selection of the freshest ingredients as well as all of the tools a gourmet cook could ever want" (Kudler, n.d.).
Kudler would like to expand the services, to improve the efficiency of the operations and increase customer's purchase cycle in the next year. In order to obtain these objectives Kudler will have insight in how the changes in technology have created business opportunities and are interested in the identifying of the generic strategy and tactics. The management would also like to know how they can continuously scan the fine foods grocer industry for ideas and updating the company strategy. The answers of these questions are described in this paper.
Changes in technology
The key question in this section is how the changes in technology have created business opportunities for Kudler. There are many changes of technology. This is a broad spectrum. There are changes from the suppliers, the internal organization and from the customer's perspective. Examples are the information technology like the internet, Enterprise Resource software Systems, innovation in production and information technology. Research learns that "today's information systems ... generate new challenges in organizing, analyzing and protecting information" (Gomez-Mejia & Balkin, 2002, p. 386). Information is important for Kudler because this is useful for the decision making and supply chain process. Table 1 gives an overview of some general changes by technology. Table 2 gives an overview of business opportunities from best practice. From technical perspective Kudler have the possibility to start with online business in the business-to-consumer and business-to-business market. An opportunity is to start with an online shop for consumers and companies, with cooking recipes and online instruction video's and the marketing activities. Partnership and alliances can create additional products and services for the stores and the online business. Strategic co-marketing with another food store is also a change. A merchant partner programme is also an interesting opportunity to grow. Excellent hard and software can streamline the processes in the company and contribute to costs reduction.
Generic strategy and tactics
For a good understanding of the strategy it is important to know the mission of the company.
Ben E. Keith Foods does not manufacture or assemble any of the products they sell. They work directly with many manufacturers and, in some cases brokers, to procure the products they offer to their customers. They are considered to be distributors and operate in a break bulk fashion. Ben E. Keith places orders for individual products in large quantities, often full truck loads, and the warehouse is stocked according to inventory thresholds set for each product based on weekly demand. When orders are received, the products requested by each customer are pulled by warehouse personnel, in the quantities requested, and combined into shipments of mixed product to be delivered to each customer.
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.
Kudler Fine Foods was started by a women, owner Kathy Kudler, who had a passion for cooking and a love for shopping for unique and creative culinary options. Kudler’s entire business plan focuses on the consumer, their needs and their wants, as well as what will provide them with the best customer service available in the San Diego, Metropolitan area. Kudler is constantly receiving new products, offers catering services and online options for shopping, as well as a staff that is educated about the products sold at Kudler Fine Foods locations. The trends at Kudler revolve around healthier living, and healthier eating. Since food trends come and go, Kudler must employ a knowledgeable staff that remains on top of the latest, emerging
"Kudler Fine Foods has experienced significant growth and is now focused on expanding the services, improving the efficiency of its operations and increasing the consumer purchase cycle as a means to increasing the loyalty and profitability of its consumers" (, ). This paper will justify the importance of marketing research in the development of Kudler Fine Foods marketing strategy and tactics. It will also identify the areas where additional market research is needed and analyze the importance of competitive intelligence and analysis in regards to the development of Kudler Fine Foods marketing strategy and tactics.
Kudler Fine Foods is a grocery food establishment that serves an upscale customer base. Kudler Fine Foods will start to focus in of how to expand upon their services and stream line the organizational process by improving the efficiency of the entire operations. The success will be measured by Kudler Fine Foods ability to integration a new system which will incorporate a database system. Kudler Fine Foods marketing should be able to easily see the most popular products purchased by customers depending on income levels, area of residence, gender, shopping location along with any other categories that marketing wants to add. The system should also automatically convert the purchases to points and add the point's totals to the customer information data base. "Analysis Phase is to understand and document the business needs and the processing requirements of the new system" (Satzinger, Jackson, Burd & Johnson 2004, p. 6)
consisted of CEO ( Kathy Kulder) ,Vice-president, and Corporate or group head of the company. Top
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