Kudler Fine Foods : Create a Problem Statement

Kudler Fine Foods & the Need for a Supply-Chain Department

Kudler Fine Foods is a gourmet food shop chain headquartered in southern California. The first of three locations opened in La Jolla in 1998. By turning her passion for gourmet food cooking into her own business, Kathy Kudler has created a successful boutique-type grocery store. Kudler Fine Foods stocks a wide selection of foods and tools for the gourmet cook in a single store.

To date, Kudler Fine Foods has been a success story for Kathy and her team. Customers are loyal and generally happy; these customers have created an environment that has allowed Kathy and the team to expand this concept into three cities. Currently, Kudler Fine Foods is considering opening another store to capitalize on the growing popularity of this concept.

Kudler Fine Foods has reached a point in its evolution where it has to make some important decisions about what it wants to do next. Unfortunately, there are some issues at Kudler Fine Foods that need to be addressed and resolved before the team at Kudler Fine Foods should take the next steps. Issues are something that can contribute to a problem, or be altogether separate. They can be temporarily fixed, but must be addressed and resolved in order to make long-term progress. One of the major issues at Kudler Fine Foods is that Kathy is involved in too many of the tactical activities, and is unable to work on strategic initiatives that will take Kudler Fine Foods to the next level of a successful company. Because Kathy has such a vested personal interest in Kudler Fine Foods, she is involved in the smallest and largest decisions at all three stores. She has been reluctant to expand her team and create corporate functional areas of the business to manage separate areas of the company and free up management time. Instead, Kathy and the department managers tackle tasks from marketing and advertising, to unpacking boxes in the back room. This issue has downstream effects in...