Kudler Fine Food is a firm and a premier gourmet grocery store that was establish in 1998 by Kathy Kudler, and has a vision of serving savvy shoppers that are seeking for the finest meat, produce, wine and cheese (Anderson, 2009). The social responsibility of Kudler Fine Food is also an important instrument connecting farmers and the firm. Whenever possible, the firm buys local produce from organic farmers. Moreover, the local homeless shelters benefit from the firm by getting free items that are still in good for healthy (Mayo-Smith, 1899). The diversity of the firm is one of the best ways in which it has been able to obtain market. The firm itself is based in La Jolla, California where Kathy’s initial needs assessment confirmed that a gourmet market is required. Another store is also situated in Del Mar, California. Kathy decided to start this store in Del Mar because both La Jolla and Del mar are highly populated and are not far from one another (Anderson, 2009).
In this paper, I am going to discuss the major important points that an MBA student has to develop a better understanding. The firm’s strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) is one major area that requires a better understanding (Anderson, 2009). As an MBA student also, there is a need to have a plan on how to accomplish a better understanding drawn from the firm, Kudler Fine Food. There is also a need to analyze the progress of the business over the last two weeks and to compare the major progress of the firm and the existing issues of Kudler Fine Food (Mayo-Smith, 1899).
First, we need to develop a better understanding in the SWOT analysis. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are what make up Kudler Fine Food. One of the strengths of Kudler Fine Food is the fact that it is very customer oriented. Whenever possible, the owner of the firm himself, Kathy, goes outside to spend a lot of time with the customers (Keller, 2008). She emphasizes helpful and friendly environment between the clerks and the customers. The clerks encourage the customers to order what they need from the firm if they don’t find it (Anderson, 2009). If many customers make a request of the same item, Kudler orders that good from the shelves. Strength of the firm is the location of the stores (Mayo-Smith, 1899). There is no direct competition from other firms. Kudler Fine Food is quite far from other companies that deal with the same products. There are less specialty stores in the region except the major independent wine store and the major grocery chains (Anderson, 2009).
Apart from the strengths we also need to develop understanding on the weaknesses of the firm, Kudler Fine Food (Mayo-Smith, 1899). First, we realize that the firm deals with perishable goods. Because the firm lacks preservatives, nearly 12% of the perishable goods are taken out of the inventory after every two weeks. They are either thrown away or freely issued to local communities. The firm also has geographic expansion limitation (Mayo-Smith, 1899). Though there are several areas, just around California that would create great sites for future stores, it gets it more inconvenient for Kathy to visit every store and maintain ordering and inventory. The establishment of San Francisco will not be easy for Kathy to use her present management approach (Anderson, 2009).
The firm also has variety of opportunities. Has it grows Kudler Fine Food has an opportunity to add more product line. If the firm gets many requests for the same good, they obtain them from the wholesalers who can provide them in trial basis (Keller, 2008). The company also has an opportunity to spread their brand away from California as it grows. Most of stores are widely spread at the central part of the United States of America (Anderson, 2009).
In the other hand also, threats has been one of the problems facing the company (Mayo-Smith, 1899). Economy is the major threat. If the economy changes, customers could stop buying food stuffs from the company. The economic declination would make peoples’ cash flow decreased. For that reason, customers may purchase less gourmet items and buy products at the local grocery store (Keller, 2008).
As the company grows, it tries to carefully plan its operation and acquire more products when the sales are expected to increase up (Mayo-Smith, 1899). Since the company deals with perishable goods, there is a need for them to be aware of their buying patterns (Anderson, 2009). It is quite appealing that the firm is forward looking in that when their sales are fewer than expected, they make a note to undertake some promotional action within the same next year. In the other hand also, when the sales are higher than expected, the try to know the reason for that (Keller, 2008).
In conclusion, the fact that Kudler Fine Food is a firm that is geographically distributed; it has an ability to diversify risks such as the one cause by the economic changes (Mayo-Smith, 1899). Though changes in economy may be constant all over the major business regions, customers’ demand may vary from one region to another (Anderson, 2009). For example, the customers around Del Mar store may highly demand Kudler Fine Food products because there is no alternative for that particular product in Del Mar region.
References
Anderson, R. (2009) Statistics for business and economic. New York: Cengage Learning.
Mayo-Smith, R. (1899) Statistics and Economics. New York: Columbia University.
Keller, G. (2008) Statistics for Management and Economics. Toronto: Cengage Learning.
Cheng, F. (2000) Statistics for Business and Financial Economics, Volume 1. New York: World Science.
