Beanz Case Study

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- Symptom: Beans does not have facilities to support catering expansion.

As indicated in the case, Beanz is rejecting customers who put in orders for catering, due to a lack of time. This presents a possible issue because if Beanz is to focus more on catering, this has the potential to bring in large amounts of profits. The addition of the catering will also differentiate them from other food places in that they will be the only business who provides special dietary catering. As most catering is done towards taste and not usually for healthy alternatives, this opens up a brand new secondary niche that can allow Beanz to increase revenues substantially.

- Symptom: Beanz relies on word of mouth and yellow pages for advertisement.

The issue that Doug and Lori have regarding their advertising is that from the very beginning of the opening of Beanz they have mostly realized on “word of mouth” as their primary tool for reaching out to their customers. They have not established an actual game plan for getting the name Beanz out there to the community. Also they are in the yellow pages, which are very out of date. Yellow pages might have been a great advertisement tool when Beanz first launched, but as technology has advanced being in the yellow pages can be good as nothing. The way the advertising is currently being done, is not even effectively working as they are not fully getting to their niche of’ special dietary needs and freshness”, and this plays a big role in getting in more revenue efficiently. Because of Doug and Lori’s advertising, it is believed that they are simply not living up to their potential.

- Symptom: Employee issues.

A few of the issues regarding the Beanz people are that they cannot find a suitable individual to occupy the rigorously time consuming store management position, because this simply did not come across as this issue in the past. The spot of the store manager has never been formalized criteria since it was covered so well. The previous two managers possessed skills and had abilities that allowed them to be aligned to their duties, and because of that Doug and Lori did not have to worry and or stress about that specific role, resulting in Doug and Lori never coming up with an actual training process for this role leading to this situation becoming very difficult. The second issue is being presented with extra stress because of many of their employees are mostly teenagers. Both Doug and Lori have had to basically aid their younger employees by portraying the role of friends, counselors or even parents. And because of that it has added unnecessary and extra stress. Mentoring and giving advice to most of the teen employees has taken up quality time from Doug and Lori’s already heavenly time consuming and busy schedule.