Unlock document.
This document is partially blurred.
Unlock all pages and 1 million more documents.
Get Access
Case study: Levendary Caf
Course: Global Enterprise and Competition
Professor: A. Mehta
Student: Yi Xu
Date: 11/28/2013
Introduction:
Howard Leventhal, the founder of the Levendary Caf, had grown a small Denver soup,
salad and sandwich restaurant into a $10 billion business in 32 years. In the quick casual
restaurant segment, Levendary Caf was distinguished by two elements: wholesome soups,
salads and sandwiches using high-quality ingredients and a commitment to service in a
comfortable, friendly environment, as well as its willingness to take risk.
In February 2011, Mia Foster was named as its new CEO. In spite of Foster’s strong track
record, analysts in Wall Street were till skeptical of her ability to build a multi-national
brand due to her lack of previous international management experience. Moreover,
Levendary’s domestic business had become matured and was nearly tapped out, and it only
had international business in Dubai, so that its recent entry into the fast-growing China
market was closely watched. Mia Foster had to focus on the expansion in China market.
Louis Chen was chosen by former CEO to enter China market first and had opened 23
restaurants. But Chen made many changes in menu and store decoration, which didn’t
follow the brand position. And he used non-GAAP numbers from China in financial
reports, which bad been a potential risk. What’s the worse, Chen didn’t make any future
strategy to drive Levendary’s expansion in China. So, Foster had to face many issues. How
to protect the corporate brand? How to formalizing report process? How to standardize the
operations in Chinese stores? How to make a right strategy to drive Levendary’s expansion
in China market? However, when Foster talked about these issues with Chen, he had
negative attitude to make a change and communicate with Foster, which let Foster have a
question in her mind: whether Louis Chen could transition to become a professional
manager from a local baron?
Questions:
1. What is a Multi-unit Restaurant (MuR) Business? How big is it? Is it a
consolidated or fragmented industry? What are its economics?
1) Multi-unit restaurant business:
MuR is a kind of business that consists of many units associated with a single brand and
every unit has its own independent operation. This concept were generally categorized into
three industry segments: one is specialty establishments that primarily served snacks and
beverages under $5; one is quick service restaurant that provided counter or drive-through
service with average tickets between $4 and $10; the last one is casual dining that means
