KUDLER FINE FOODS

Kudler Fine Foods



Kudler Fine Foods

Current Business Processes and Systems

Kudler Fine Foods is an upscale gourmet ingredient store selling breads, pastries, meat, seafood, produce, cheese, dairy, domestic wine and imported wine. The company currently is based in three business locations. These locations include La Jolla, Del Mar and Encinitas. Kudler does not have an official purchasing department; however, standard purchasing procedures are located in its operations department. All the department managers from each location are responsible for ordering his or her stock items. They must ensure that they place their orders promptly with suppliers using a standard order purchasing form, along with obtaining the best prices, quality and quick delivery as possible.

In addition, the store managers are accountable for receiving and verifying all orders to determine if they received the correct items and quantities. Items received are then documented on an Order Received form and sent to Accounting so that invoices for the items can be paid (University of Phoenix Virtual Portal, 2008). Furthermore, the store managers are expected to check with one another based on the quality, delivery and pricing of the items and combine orders between stores if they believe there will be a savings for larger quantities or multiple items.

Orders for Kudler's products can be received in several ways. These ways include mail, fax or e-mail. Once the order is received the next step is to hand the order summary to the suppliers. According to the Kudler Fine Foods University of Phoenix Virtual Portal, whatever the method used, a purchase order form is always filled out initially the form then becomes the key to tracking and budgeting an order (2008). Furthermore, Kathy Kudler, CEO of Kudler Fine Foods, can place purchase orders related to capital, repair or even unique items that might be required by an individual or for items used by all three stores. These capital, repair and unique items can be related to bulk Purchase Orders or Receiving forms.

Advertising

Kathy Kudler is also responsible for the preparation of advertisements for local newspapers, along with coordinating the items on sale with each of the department managers during the weekly operations meetings. Advertised specials are offered at all three stores simultaneously (University of Phoenix Virtual Portal, 2008). The weekly operations meetings ensure that adequate quantities of merchandise or goods will be in stock. If a higher demand on items is detected in one particular store over another then the merchandise can be shifted between the stores.

In general the current state of the operations and marketing processes leaves room for improvement. A better job of tracking purchases and stocked items is needed and more information should be shared between departments for forecasting purposes. The scope and goals to achieve this will follow.

Scope and Goals

The point of a frequent shopper program is to benefit the company, while providing a perceived value to the customer. This means that this project will have one process, but meet dual focuses. The results of these two focuses will provide the benchmarks and ...