Case Study: Kristen Cookies

The main goal of the Cookies unit was to solve the Unit Problem. The unit problem introduced us to the Woos, the owners of a cookie bakery. The Woos want to find the most profitable combination of plain and iced cookies to bake and sell in their store. We were given several constraints for this problem. According to the Woo’s recipes, a dozen normal cookies requires one pound of cookie dough, and a dozen iced cookies requires .7 pounds of cookie dough. The Woo family only has 110 pounds of cookie dough in stock, which will affect the number of cookies that can be made. The iced cookies also need icing, obviously. A dozen of iced cookies required .4 pounds of icing and the Woos only have 32 pounds of icing in stock.

Ike Telloni always wanted to start his own business; he completed a Commerce program at the University of Ottawa and later moved on to work for the Waterloo Ice Cream Company. Ike worked at the company as a sales representative and then a regional marketing director but after working there for ten years he wanted to find a job where he could be close to family. So he bought a business that was for sale in Elgin Beach’s main street called Hannah’s Ice Cream. This forty year business was an icon in the town, everyone loved it and reason for that was because of how Hannah (the owner) treated her employees, she made sure they were

Imagine that you have decided to open a small ice cream stand on campus called "Ice-Campusades." You are very excited because you love ice cream (delicious!) and this is a fun way for you to apply your business and economics skills! Here is the first month's scenario--you order the same number (and the same variety) of ice creams each day from the ice cream suppliers, and your ice creams are always marked at $1.50 each. However, you notice that there are days when ice creams remain unsold but other days when there are not enough ice creams for the number of customers.

In the case of more than 3 dozens of cookies we have to consider the fact that the mixing bowl can only hold for up to three dozens of cookies. Thus, we have 12+4*(2+1+2)+1=33 min of valuable time with costs of ((33/60)*L)/4=0,1375. So the maximum is reached when we produce up to 3 dozens, but we should give discounts on 3+ orders, too.

6. There are a few changes we can make to the process to increase efficiency. Buying another oven (of the same size) that allows you to put in 2 trays during the Load&Bake process will increase the process from 22 dozens to 30 dozens or 26.6% after four hours. Also, by having customer pay during the packing period (2 minutes), we would circumvent time wasted in the pay period (1minute).

Assuming that we add another oven, the cycle time of the ovens would be 5 minutes. The new bottleneck for the entire process would now be that of mixing the ingredients and dishing the cookies onto the tray, a process which takes 8 minutes for 1 batch of cookies.

1. The local Mastermind store sells innovative educational toys. Part of their service is giving advice to customers about the best toys for a particular age group, which requires having more customer service representatives in the store. During the month long Christmas buying season, it makes half of its $500,000 yearly sales. Its contribution margin on average is 40% and its fixed costs for the year are about $150,000. The owner believes that she could make even higher sales, if she had more customer service representatives on the floor during the peak season. She plans on hiring four more people for 200 hours each at $20 per hour. How much additional revenue does she have earn to the nearest dollar

Situation analysis: Ivan Guillen was asked to develop a marketing strategy in Canada to improve the business portion of the Pillsbury refrigerated baked goods category of General Mills (pg 1).

A long-time friend insists that Natalie has to somehow include cookies in her business plan. After a series of brainstorming sessions, Natalie settles on the idea of operating a cookie-making school. She will start on a part-time basis and offer her services in

The Pillsbury Cookie Challenge is a case study written by Natalie Mauro under the supervision of Professor Allison Johnson. The case study creates an open discussion about what the marketing manager of the refrigerated baked goods category for Canada General Mills should do to revive his products. Ivan Guillen, the marketing manager, was faced with tough challenges. He was initially “…faced with the challenge of developing a strategy that would lead to improved business performance on his category” (Johnson and Mauro, p.1, 2011). To clarify, Guillen’s category is refrigerated baked goods (RBG), which means, this category is his marketing responsibility. The issue here is that “RBG was GMCC’s fourth largest category, and its performance over the past two years had been less than stellar” (Johnson and Mauro, p.1, 2011). It is important to note that GMCC stands for General Mills Canada Corporation. Pillsbury has enjoyed majority market share in the RBG category in Canada, however, recently, the market was experiencing only moderate growth. Guillen was disappointed that their goal of 5%-7% market growth was not being achieved mainly in the refrigerated cookie dough segment. To be exact, their volume growth for two years was flat and they were having difficulty reaching new households. There was a shift among consumer’s purchases, which Guillen was challenged to figure out why.

In order to market a product, we must first understand customer needs and wants. Consumer insight is the information gathered about a target population in order to better align market strategies with consumer needs. The goal is to better understand the customer ­ in the Pillsbury Cookie Case, Guillen focused on his cookie customers.

Also, according to break-even analysis operating with the single mold and excluding warehousing costs, a minimum of 12,035 units must be sold to break even. Under a similar situation with the double mold, 15,507 units must be sold to break even, which is about half of the optimistic sales projection. Also under the optimistic sales projection, a positive return on investment is expected. Because the company is turning profit,less additional investment is required. Additionally under the pessimistic and expected situation, the company turns losses, and under the optimistic projections, Chef’s Toolkit only has a net income of 13% of its revenues. Selecting Preferred alternative According to the above information and the projected pro-forma statements, Dale Reid should not invest his money in the company. The company’s lack of current assets, high expenses and low per-unit revenue create an unfortunate and unprofitable investment in pessimistic and expected situations. Only in the optimistic production and sales does the company begin to turn profit, but this profit is low. Chef’s Toolkit needs desperate restructuring and additional revenue sources before Dale Reid should invest. Developing

Decrease the unit of work. If you've got people idle, you can afford to have them do their work in smaller chunks. Under a cost-accounting model, this hurts their "efficiency" by removing certain economies of scale. But you have much faster turn-around time. Everyone's more flexible. Work flows more smoothly. (Well, this is what the book says.)

Describe a typical day at work at Mrs. Fields’ Cookies for Store manager, District manager, Regional director of operations, Store controller and for Debbi and Randy Fields.

Kristen and her roommate are preparing to launch Kristen’s Cookie Company in their on-campus apartment. The company will provide fresh cookies to hungry students late at night. Evaluation of the preliminary design for the company’s production process will be required in order to make key policy decisions, including what prices to charge, what equipment to order and how many orders to accept, and to determine whether the business can be profitable.