Noodles & Company

Noodles & Company team is facing tremendous pressures from large players seeking to push into the fast casual segment that Noodle & Company had helped to inspire and shape. Noodles & Company was battling the competition on multiple fronts; it fought for attractive real estate, for qualified and enthusiastic employees, for capital and, of course, for customers. Noodles & Company faces the challenges with how it could compete effectively in an increasingly crowded marketplace, achieve its growth objectives by building 20 to 40 stores in 4 to 5 markets in 5 to 7 years, which the number must grow dramatically in other to keep pace with competition, and still maintain Noodles & Company’s unique culture. I will elaborate all the challenges that Noodles & Company is facing in the following passages and also induce recommendations.

A) Challenges: Culture issues & National brand

One of the biggest challenges Noodles & Company is facing is to make sure that Noodles & Company values of respect, passion, balance, and fun are alive and well at the restaurant level. The management does worry about maintaining those attributes. Will Noodles & Company be able to hire for those values and promote them within the general pool as fast as they are building stores? Driving and instilling the culture throughout the organization, to transfer the culture from the central-support office, in touch with the customer and carrying on the culture, meeting operating expectations to deliver the same product offering and consistence level of service to embody the vision “every guest, every bowl, every time”, to preserve Noodles & Company’s unique culture, are the challenges that Noodles & Company is facing.

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