Rohan Viswanath
Dinesh Patro
Avijit Suman
Background on the organization
The Zingerman’s Community of Businesses is a family of small food-related companies and
entrepreneurial ventures. Each is located in the Ann Arbor area. They are operated by one or more
partners who share ownership and manage the business. The online shop for Zingerman’s food, gi”s and
more. Zingerman’s Mail Order sends extraordinary, tradi&onally made foods anywhere in America.
Featuring hearth baked breads, handmade cheeses, varietal co)ee, estate bo*led olive oils and
customized professional presents.
The proprietors for Zingerman’s mail order are Mo Freche*e, Toni Morell and Tom Root.
Noticeable Milestones
In 1991 Zingerman’s 0rst mail order catalog was released. Deli employees Mo Freche*e and Jude
Walton take the lead in shipping food to hungry guests looking to get their Zingerman’s 0x from
afar. Four years later food writer Ed Behr describes Zingerman’s mail order catalog as “…the
more discrimina&ng selec&on of foods that I am aware of.”
In 1998 Food Gatherers delivers over 2,000,000 pounds of food to help feed those in need in
Washtenaw County. A”er three years of outstanding e)ort, Jude Walton and Maurice (Mo)
Freche*e make the jump to full->edged partners of Zingerman’s Mail Order. The push towards
Zingerman’s 2009 con&nues
Today Zingerman’s mail order is one of its kind with tremendous development as a lean
organiza&on and one of the premier lean organiza&ons in such an industry and working
environment.
Three Levels of Culture
O”en companies focus on Mechanis&c Bureaucracy while we want an adaptable learning organiza&on.
Requirement for adap&ve learning organiza&on:
Long standing values
Clear Strategies to prosper
Strategies become concrete goals for improvement
Whole organiza&on is striving to reach improvement goals
Running many experiments to con&nuously learn
Rohan Viswanath
Dinesh Patro
Avijit Suman
Zingerman’s mail order clearly possess all of the above but even now there is this extreme zeal for more.
In spite of reaching its epitome as a lean organiza&on in its league it s&ll strives to learn more and bring
about more improvements.
Organizational Culture is the pa*ern of basic assump&ons that a given group has invented, discovered or
developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adapta&on and internal integra&on and that
have worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore to be taught to the new members as a
correct way to perceive, think and feel in rela&on to those problems.Their internal culture is &ghter and
stronger than ever. The atmosphere buzzes with the excitement of food, customer service, and >avorful
finance. It’s also an atmosphere alive with openly sharing our tradi&ons, backgrounds, and cultural
values. Many of the employees have discovered that they are more different from each other than alike
– and this variety makes working at Zingerman’s a whole lot of fun according to them. Their training
emphasizes that they have biases but they can acknowledge and transform them so that they can be
employees with open minds and radical dedica&on to the best service for every colleague, customer, and
food tradi&on.
