Overview of Management: Kudler Fine Food

Overview of Management

Overview of Management: Kudler Fine Food

"Kathy Kudler, was the Vice-President of Marketing for a large defense contractor. Weary of the constant travel and the pressures of corporate life, Kathy was looking for other opportunities. As it happened, Kathy relieved her stress through gourmet cooking and on a shopping trip for ingredients for a gourmet repast, she suddenly realized that there was an opportunity for an upscale epicurean food shop in La Jolla. Kathy developed a business plan, obtained financing and six months later, on June 18, 1998, the first Kudler Fine Foods opened. Within nine months the store was at break-even and was profitable for the year." (UoP, 2007)

Kudler Fine Foods is a local upscale specialty food store located in the San Diego metropolitan area, California. The company has 3 locations: La Jolla, Del Mar and Encinitas. The stores are stocked with domestic and imported foodstuffs. Divided into the following departments: Fresh Bakery and Pastries; Fresh Produce; Fresh Meat and Seafood; Condiments and Packaged Foods; Cheese's and Specialty Dairy Products.

The Kudler Fine Foods's mission is: "provide our customers the finest in selected foddstuffs, wines, and related needs in an unparalleled consumer environment" (UoP, 2007). The strategic objective is to increase loyalty and profitability of consumers. To archive this goal, the company is working to expand the services (revenue increase), frequent shopper program (revenue increase) and increasing efficiency (cost reduction).

At Kudler Fine Foods, the central administration team is formed by Kathy Kudler as the president since the start in 1998. Kathy is the founder and responsible for the strategic vision and decisions leading the company to a brilliant future. Harvey Stephens is acting as the director of Finance and Accounting. In this role, Harvey is responsible for managing all corporate expenses, assets, liabilities and capital. In the assets space, Harvey need control all inventory reports. In the financial space, Harvey is responsible for all corporate accounts, budgets and all bank reconciliation procedures. Yvonne Reynolds is acting as the director of store operations since 1998. In this role, Yvonne is responsible for Managing the operations of the three stores, including inventory, purchasing and logistics. Yvonne is also responsible for the store safety, facility maintenance, security and compliance with state and federal regulations. Brenda Wagner is acting as the director of administration/human resources since 1998. In this role, Brenda is responsible for employment, compensation, labor relations, benefits, employee services and training.

The technology and the Internet used by Kudler Fine Foods currently are not efficient. The web site is very poor and does not contain any e-commerce technology. The web site is a very simple static HTML code, pointing only the very basic list of departments in Kudler, the address, phone number and a map quest. In the intranet side, a very basic Access database is available for common tables used in the company: customer, inventory, item, order, order line, store, supplier, tax and tender. The company must improve the obsolete database by new technology. A Relational Database (Oracle, SQL, Sybase) with a high-availability system, backups and security access and audit trail. A data warehouse can be used to perform a data miner in customer's preferences and identify new items to be added on the portfolio of Kudler Fine Foods. The network is very old too and need replacement. Netware 4.11 is already end of life and could expose the company to many internet and virus threads. A Windows 2008 server infrastructure will be adequate for this size of company. The Internet connection (56Kbps) is not enough for the current bandwidth requirements. A new ISDN 2Mbps connection will be a good start. The POS devices must be upgrades from Windows 9x (already end of life) to new corporate standard, Windows Vista Enterprise. All this technology affects its management because Kudler Fine Foods is not taking advantage of the available technology to improve the business. The web site can be improved to provide a detailed list of each department, orders via internet, delivery and much more.

Based on the Porter's five forces, the model of pure competition implies that risk-adjusted rates of return should be constant across firms and industries. However, numerous economic studies have affirmed that different industries can sustain different levels of profitability; part of this difference is explained by industry