Kudler Find Foods Case Study

Service Request SR-kf-013 Paper

Kenneth Gilbert

University of Phoenix

BSA/310

Marcia Reid

May 7, 2012

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Kudler Find Foods was open in 1998, and founded by Kathy Kudler. Kathy's passion for gourmet cooking led to Kathy opening up her first gourmet store because of the lack of places to purchase quality gourmet products. The first store was open in La Jolla California, and then followed by two other locations, one in Del Mar California, and the other in Encinitas California (Kudler, 2010.)

The owner Kathy Kudler does all the ordering for all three stores buying in bulk. To have products as fresh as possible, Kathy and her staff pull products if turnover is not what is expected. By Kathy placing the orders and keeping track items that are not selling allows her to control waste of perishable goods. In addition to this Kathy has specialize staff members to assist the customers with any questions or culinary needs. Each store has his or her own specialist working during regular business hours (Kudler, 2010.)

In order for Kathy to start a frequent shopper program a SWOT analysis needs to be completed to identify any weakness, strengths, opportunities, or threats. Some of the strengths Kudlers have are small company, minimal competition, variety of products, good customer rapport, ideal location, owner's work ethics, and returning customers. The weakness are majority of product are perishable, highly paid specialized staff, over worked managers, and limits on geographic locations. The opportunities are expansion, delegate workload to more experience staff, provide additional catering services, increase type of products, expand outside of the state, and possibility to be purchase. The threats are declining economy and other gourmet stores (Kudler, 2010.)

The future for Kudler Fine foods are to expand statewide, along with nationally. In addition to expanding Kudler's ultimate goal is to compete with other higher end gourmet shops. One way Kudler plans on doing this is starting a website that in the end will have e-commerce capabilities that will allow Kudler to

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automate ordering and inventory. This will allow Kudler to track product sales and replace product as needed. Starting a website and operating system this will assist Kudler in starting a "Frequent Shopper Program" (Kudler, 2010.)

The "Frequent Shopper Program" Kudler plans on starting are to reward the customers who are loyal. The initiative behind this is