Kudler Fine Foods Case Study

Kudler Fine Foods

Kudler Fine Foods was founded by Kathy Kudler in 1998. Kudler Fine Foods is an upscale specialty food store located in the San Diego metropolitan area. Since opening, the CEO, Kathy Kudler expanded into the La Jolla, Del Mar and Encinitas areas of California. Each location was carefully selected and serves a shopping center in size of approximately 16,000 square feet offering the consumers a variety of specialty foods, such as baked goods, fresh produce, meats, seafood, cheeses and wines. More recently, Kathy chose to make some business changes by contracting with local growers of organic produce and to also offer consumers a catering service and by contracting with a local grower for organic produce.

When shopping at Kudler Fine Foods customers will experience friendly and knowledgeable employees to help with any questions and purchases they may have. The average consumer would think of Kudler Fine Foods as a well-established operation that provides a pleasant shopping experience. However, growth of the business has slowed mainly as a result of some unethical practices that have been exposed from outside sources. When we look at the operations of the business, some areas need improvement in order to uphold the ethical standard this company once desired.

Kudler Fine Foods utilizes a Retail Management System that helps track the company's finances such as sales transactions, inventory orders, checking and savings accounts as well as check printing information. Even though this program is equipped with security features such as passwords, Kudler Fine Foods does not utilize these features and creates an unethical environment by allowing easy access to private company information to any employee.

Kudler Fine Foods has invested money in a Retail Management System but fails to protect their business from internal theft, a problem that results in the failure of many businesses. Surprisingly, employee theft far exceeds shoplifting simply because companies focus more on shoplifting than they do internal theft.

An employer never truly knows the individual circumstances of those to which they hire. Internal theft can be attributed to many factors; the need for money to support a lifestyle or family, the need to support a drug or gambling habit or simply to support other living standards. Employees may also steal to support a family problem such as a spouse who may have recently lost their job. Kudler Fine Foods, with their lack of concern in securing their company's private information, is potentially opening the door and inviting internal theft amongst their employees. This creates a difficult situation in the event one employee witnesses such actions and fears retribution for either reporting the incident, or not reporting it; either way, it's not ethically fair for the employees who come to work for the right reasons.

Another potentially unethical practice is