Zingerman's Community of Businesses

Question 1 – What is Zingerman’s mission and what kind of challenges does it pose?

The formalized mission was all about sharing an intimate experience: “share the Zingemann’s experience”, in a sense of providing a service that makes the customers smile with a food that makes them happy.

The reason why employees wanted to share the Zingerman’s experience was “To enrich as many lives as |they| possibly |could|. And the way they would go about sharing the Zingerman’s Experience was by “showing love and caring in all |their| actions.”

Out of Zingerman’s mission and vision, a commitment, in a form of a triangle, took shape:1) great food, 2) great service, and 3) great finance. But there were also several challenges…

Employees must view themselves as unique stakeholders for providing such memorable and successful experience - “Providing high-quality food and exceptional service viewed as ends unto themselves”, and on the other hand, employees did have to share Ari and Paul’s business principles and values in order to pass on such passion on the customer experience. Thus, recruitment policies had the purpose of attracting the right employees that would in fact believe in such vision, mission and guiding principles.

It was also crucial that the leadership philosophy that Ari and Paul truly believed in was shared by all the collaborators.

Hence, this was also a challenge: passing a mindset of values and principles onto Zingerman's managers. On the other hand, due to the expected growth of different businesses it will also be a challenge to maintain the Zingerman's culture as a main structural aspect of the organization.

Question 2 – What is Zingerman’s strategy and what kind of systems are in place to support it?

In "Zingerman's 2009: A Food Odyssey" Saginaw and Weinzweig laid out plans for a company that would grow to encompass twelve to fifteen separate businesses over the next fifteen years, each one small and located in the Ann Arbor area.

Like Zingerman's Bakehouse, in operation, each would have at least one managing partner who would do hands-on work and be a part owner. The businesses would all be food-related and serve to enhance the basic Zingerman's concept and bear its name. Funding would come from the two original partners (who would take a majority stake) and their new managing partner-owners and it should be designed to break even as quickly as possible, based essentially on cash flow.

The plan met with a decidedly mixed response the partners' legal and financial advisers thought the structure of separate businesses co-owned with new partners was a bad idea; and customers were concerned that the deli they loved would change in ways they did not like. In addition, the store's managers had the most negative reaction of all: within the following year and a half, more than four-fifths quit.

Unfazed, the partners proceeded to put the plan into action by first forming Zingerman's Service Network, or ZingNet, which would provide central administrative services to the new units. A Chief Financial Officer was hired, and new management practices were put into place. A new non-food unit, Zingerman's Training, Inc. (ZingTrain), was introduced next. ZingTrain would offer training for both Zingerman's employees and outside firms that wanted to reach the high levels of quality for which Zingerman's had earned a reputation. To facilitate training new employees, the company's principles and practices had already been codified in a series of multi-part plans.

Question 3 – What is the key to their success – what gives them their competitive advantage?

The success and competitive advantage of the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses is due to several factors.

First of all, the design of the ownership structure, set by the participation of the business