Introduction
Kathy Kudler had a dream, to open up a specialty food shop in the Metropolitan area. In 1998, Kudler Fine Foods, an upscale specialty food store opened in the San Diego area. There are three locations; La Jolla, Del Mar and Encinitas. Each store is stocked with the very finest foods. Kathy Kudler is the sole owner and does much of the back end jobs on her own.
Problem Statement
Kathy currently works seven days per week. She does all the purchasing and inventories herself. She also does a lot of the restocking herself, much of the time before and after store hours. Kathy likes to do this herself because much of the food she carries is perishable.
Kathy also goes to all of her stores daily to take inventory and does the purchasing. Currently Kathy is spread very thin. She also handles all of the finances as well determining how much each product should sell for. And the list of her sole responsibilities goes on, she also does the accounts payable and receivables. While being the sole owner of a company, Kathy handles all the decision making it is too much for one person to handle.
End Vision
In order for Kathy to do what she set out to do, which is to keep expanding and to be out front with her customers; Kathy needs to hire more staff. First, she needs to hire someone to take care of purchasing and inventory. Kathy spends much, if not most of her time doing this for each of her three stores. If she wants to continue to grow she will not be able to keep doing everything herself and she will run herself into the ground. What Kathy loves to do is to be out front mingling and talking to the customers. She cannot continue to do this if she is in the back doing all the ordering as well as all the finances.
She also needs to hire good, reliable stock clerks. By training them well and empowering them so that she can not only train them to work the way she sees fit, but there is less likely to be such high turnover... By reducing...