Kudler_Fine_Food_Strategic_Plan

| Kudler Fine Foods | What are the issues | | Norma Raynor | 9/1/2010 | Professor : Vinny Yakoobian | Kudler Fine Foods was established in 1988 by Kathy Kudler. Kudler Foods was started due to a vision that Kathy had to own her own gourmet food store. In the store there is: a bakery, meat section, produce, cheese and dairy section and also a fine wine counter. Because Kathy has started her business with no experience in operating a gourmet food shop, there are some issues that can be found in the strategic planning of her business. The first issue that can be found as research is done on her business is with the potential health of Kathy. Kathy works seven day a week in all stores, most of her time is spent ordering supplies, and for restocking the stores after out dated perishables are pulled from the shelf during inventory. With all of her time spent on the three different locations there is little time for a personal life or very much rest. Kathy controls the finances of the full business operation. She is responsible for paying all vendors, and because there is no back up help for her at this time, if Kathy were to get sick the orders would not get done, the vendors would not get paid and the deliveries would stop. Kathy has three locations a store in La Jolla, Del Mar and a new store that just opened in Encinitas all in California. The issue with the Del Mar location is that it is located only about 35 minutes away from the La Jolla store. The short distance between stores and the small size of the town is causing a hardship on the Del Mar stores profit. Since the store has opened with lack of traffic the store has only been able to break even in profit. Another issue that was found is the use of only perishable items. These items have limited shelf-life. Kathy has chosen not to use any preservatives, therefore approximately 12% of her perishable outdated merchandise has to be pulled and either thrown away or given to the less fortunate, which can cause a loss. Another issue is lack of store space for any new items, this is due to store space being used for grocery items that the stores carries, and there is also the threat of bad weather. With the purchase of all fresh perishables, any bad weather could affect the production of crops needed for inventory, and the cost could increase. There needs to be some investment made in non-perishable goods. There is also the issue of no website or e-commerce established as of yet, but there is the thought of another new store being opened. There is great opportunity on the internet for potential business and advertisement, most customers surf the web every chance they get from the privacy of their home. There has also not been any integration of modern technology that will allow the manual labor of ordering goods and inventory to be done with the push of a button. The catering business that the business gets is solely done by Kathy, there is a real need for; a team, expansion of coffee and tea, a fish counter for fresh fish, and a deli, which will allow customers to come in and select any style meat and have it cut and sliced to their preference. Kudler Fine Foods has a lot of ideas that will work. There is a need to innovate the stores that are doing great business now and potentially relocate the store in Del Mar. Money needs to be invested in some assistance for Kathy, so that if any health issues arise then she will have skilled people and a state of the art system in place that will order, do inventory and pay vendors with the push of a button. The issues that have been mentioned in this paper were direct statements that were found in the,”2003 Strategic Plan, “for Kudler Fine Foods. When these issues are worked out there will not be any competitive company that will out serve Kundler Fine Foods.