Laurentian Bakeries Case Study

Braum’s Incorporation is a vertically integrated company (owns multiple segments of industry and merges them together) which allows them to produce their products to the quality and standards they want. The corporation produces meat, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables. They have 280 stores located throughout Kansas, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, and the majority located in Oklahoma, where their headquarters are (About Us 2016). The chains of stores located in these areas provide hamburgers, ice cream, and a small grocery store for their customers. Although Braum’s provides all of these commodities they’re mainly known for their ice cream.

As mentioned in the case study, Panera Bread Company is known to be one of the leading bakery/café that offers freshly baked pastries and French inspired entrées across various states in the US. However in the recent years, Panera Bread faced a decrease in their usual high growth rate from 9.1% and 12.0% in the year 2000 to merely 0.2% and 0.5% of comparable sales and annualized unit volumes respectively.

Therefore this industry is a pretty good one to already be in, but would be very tough to try and break into. Since established firms do not have to worry about threat of entrants or substitution, they can focus on making their core business practices cost efficient and profitable. Although firms have to deal with high buyer and supplier power, every firm has to deal with these issues. Therefore this leaves only rivalry to compete on, which forces firms to stay sharp, observe the competition, and provide excellent service to the firm’s customers to generate profit.

The SWOT analysis analyses the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, therefore Burt’s Bees can counter a few critical weaknesses that could threaten our ability to build profitability and the market position.

Although the company has been in business for over a hundred years it has encountered several challenges. One weakness is its image. As described earlier this image is not conducive to one to be associated with the kindler, softer side of humanity. Another threat or weakness is the continued outsourcing of manufacturing of parts and accessories into overseas markets and companies. Although, there is no set percentage

MEMORANDUM 03.01.2010 TO: FROM: RE: Daphne Matthews Alex Associate - 4667 Memo Assignment 1: Who Does the Pastry?

Premium brand name, proven management team, lower costs/ higher margins, diverse workforce, higher consumer demand. I think these are definitely likely to change simply cause who knows how long you can maintain a low cost, high margin company. Anything can happen.

In our analysis, we compared the profits earned by 60 Crusty Dough Pizza Company restaurants to factors associated to their menu, amenities, services, and statistics regarding the restaurant communities. The factors that we analyzed are listed in Table 1.

* Retail Company is growing- its direct-to-consumer business grew from 8%-11%, went from 155 stores before 2012 to over 200 today.

Maple Leaf Foods (MLF), a result of many mergers and amalgamations, has been in Canada for over 100 years. Its operations focus on three core areas: meat products, agribusiness and bakery products. The meat product group is the largest, with sales to about $2.5 billion in 2000. Each business is made up of independent operating companies (IOCs), with each IOC run by a president and encouraged to follow a common set of values. Efforts are underway to optimize vertical coordination of the IOCs. A major concern for the meat product division is the loss of market share in the hot dog industry where average price per kilo is increasing

The purpose of this memo is to offer a recommendation in the restructuring of Interstate Bakeries. This advice has been initiated at the request of company CEO James Elesser so that he can better ascertain which option, filing for bankruptcy or seeking further mergers and acquisitions, would be the best direction to take to counteract flailing profit margins. This is an independent recommendation made from researching the company’s financial history as well as the company’s product portfolio and market segments.

Evaluating the industry based on Porter's Five Forces framework, the following stand out as the most import conditions making the industry unattractive:

Its current high price point/quality marketing strategy also introduces it to a variety of competitors. Predominantly these are British and European products that employ the cachet of their point of origin to justify their high price point. Other products, some not even manufactured in P E I compete for the linkage

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.

Strengths of this brand include: it is the 4th largest marketer, brand longevity, and it has a large/high awareness in big cities. Its’ weaknesses are: low market share, low market coverage, limited bottlers’ network, relatively low advertising