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GMCR Case Analysis
What did Bob Stiller do to make this venture successful?
Bob Stiller took what he knew, and what he liked, and created Green Mountain Coffee. It all started decades ago when he was having a cup of coffee in Sugar Bush, Vermont. He found out it was made by a retail store in Waitesfield, Vermont, that sold its 20 specialty coffees to the public and a few local restaurants.
Stiller bough the coffee for $100,000, and became CEO in 1981. When he took over, his main goal was to create the ultimate coffee experience for his customers, and substantiated his vision with his five core beliefs, “a passion for coffee, financial performance, a destination workplace, ethics, and commitment to social responsibility.”
Green Mountain Coffee understands that if the customer is successful, then so is the company, and lets its employees know of this. The interconnected systems at GMCR helped drive a successful business direction. It supported the company’s strategic planning process and organizational change program. Stiller also insisted on taking his employees to the coffee “origin,” which included coffee farms, so they could have an appreciation for the working conditions, environmental conditions, and where their job fit in to it all. All of these things, and more, led to the success of Bob Stiller making GMCR a successful venture.
Stiller also had a deep commitment to a sustainable coffee process, including the commitment to organic food processes, which costs more and takes more time to cultivate. In this weeks reading, we learned that in order to be considered a sustainable entrepreneur, one must have imagination, vision, passion, and emotion. This is because of
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the decisions sometimes made that don’t necessarily make financial sense. An example is going with cheaper coffee producers so you can get more business from customers which leads to more income and profit. But a sustainable entrepreneur is not driven only by...