Kudler Fine Foods Now and Tomorrow

Kudler Fine Foods Now and Tomorrow

Kudler Fine Foods is facing several ongoing issues that question the gourmet grocery store's successfulness for the future. As a business owner, Kathy Kudler is the total management team of Kudler Fine Foods, a gourmet grocery store. Currently, Kudler Fine Foods is comprised of three locations, La Jolla, Del Mar, and Encinitas. All stores sell a large variety of perishable goods, have high payrolls, and the Kathy is the sole management team for all of them. Kathy invested in her dream to have a one-stop shop that could cater numerous choices of gourmet foods and goods all in one place.

Kathy has been able to get by without having any previous managerial or accounting skills. Although her first store is doing well, the second location, Del Mar, isn't as successful, while the third store has just opened not too long ago. Kathy is the only one who makes the buying decisions, but her lack of accounting knowledge is hindering her business. If she had an accountant that could keep her abreast of how her business was doing, what kind of shape her business is in, are we ready for the seasonality that accompanies good and bad months. How much money can she spend on advertising to help make the bad months better. How are we doing as compared to last year? These are just a few of the questions she could ask her accountant and save herself countless hours by trusting someone else to handle that part of the business for her. If she were to expand her management team with an experienced store manager, an accountant, and groom her other managers, she would have the time to do things that require her attention like finalizing orders, looking over inventory numbers, looking over daily sales, and being able to interact with customers and employees on a regular basis.

Kathy currently does not have a healthy work-life balance (Lockwood, 2003). She is unable to take the tie to step away and engage in conversation with friends or go on vacations. Her life revolves around her business. At the pace Kathy is going she is going to spread herself thin. In order to live a great life, you need to have the right resources and people in place so you can focus on what matters most (WHITE, August 18, 2000). Once this new focus is realized and accepted, then the initial turn to the right direction will be hard, but will be worth it. With these changes, in a few months noticeable problems will no longer be present and the dream of having successful premier gourmet grocery stores can now be a reality once more.

By expanding her management team, Kathy will not have to do everything herself. And by hiring an experienced store manager in each store, she can trust someone else to help her make the day to day decisions and take some of the time consuming responsibilities off of her so she can concentrate on the overall operation of the stores. But she has stores