Blue Ridge Case Outline

Case Breakdown:

Intro Summary:

* Yannis Costas: European Managing director of Blue Ridge Restaurants

* Lives in London

* Costas has worked for Blue Ridge Restaurants for 10 years.

* Costas spent many years creating a successful joint venture, between his company, Blue Ridge Restaurants Corporation, and Terralumen S.A.

* Terralument S.A. = a mid-sized family owned company in spain.

* The Joint Venture

* Had been profitable

* Had grown at a reasonably fast pace in recent years.

* Partnering with Terralumen was the key reason for Blue Ridge’s success in spain.

* Delta Foods Corporation = Blue Ridge’s new owner

* Wanted out of the joint venture.

* Tension between Terralumen and Delta over future rates of growth

* Most recent talks ended in an amicable compromise (Costas thought).

* Costas thought that Delta’s senior managers should have realized that their growth targets were unrealistic.

* Argued several times with Costas trying every single angle in an attempt to convince them to stick with the joint venture but wasn't able to.

* Costas assigned to the task of developing a dissolution strategy.

Blue Ridge Restaurants:

* Blue Ridge: founded in virginia in 1959, quickly got the reputation for quality fast food.

* 1974 Blue Ridge was sold to an investment group for $4million USD. After they had established more than 500 food outlets in the US and Canada.

* Experienced sales growth of 96% annually over the next 5 years.

* International sales were lacking any obvious principles of the organization and had no International strategy.

* If a foreign restauranter wanted to start a Blue Ridge franchise, they would simply submit a request to Blue Ridge HQ.

* Little to no concern for maintaining product consistency or quality control in foreign markets.

* 1981, Blue Ridge was acquired by an International Beverages company for $420million...