Case Study: Levendary Café

Case study: Levendary Café

Course: Global Enterprise and Competition

 Introduction:

Howard Leventhal, the founder of the Levendary Café, had grown a small Denver soup, salad and sandwich restaurant into a $10 billion business in 32 years. In the quick casual restaurant segment, Levendary Café was distinguished by two elements: wholesome soups, salads and sandwiches using high-quality ingredients and a commitment to service in a comfortable, friendly environment, as well as its willingness to take risk.

In February 2011, Mia Foster was named as its new CEO. In spite of Foster’s strong track record, analysts in Wall Street were till skeptical of her ability to build a multi-national brand due to her lack of previous international management experience. Moreover, Levendary’s domestic business had become matured and was nearly tapped out, and it only had international business in Dubai, so that its recent entry into the fast-growing China market was closely watched. Mia Foster had to focus on the expansion in China market.

Louis Chen was chosen by former CEO to enter China market first and had opened 23 restaurants. But Chen made many changes in menu and store decoration, which didn’t follow the brand position. And he used non-GAAP numbers from China in financial reports, which bad been a potential risk. What’s the worse, Chen didn’t make any future strategy to drive Levendary’s expansion in China. So, Foster had to face many issues. How to protect the corporate brand? How to formalizing report process? How to standardize the operations in Chinese stores? How to make a right strategy to drive Levendary’s expansion in China market? However, when Foster talked about these issues with Chen, he had negative attitude to make a change and communicate with Foster, which let Foster have a question in her mind: whether Louis Chen could transition to become a professional manager from a local baron?

Questions:

1. What is a Multi-unit Restaurant (MuR)...