Question

Two questions:

1. Identify the central issue(s) of the case.

2. Outline the facts of the case.

* Below is the case study *

Wings of Fire Case Study:

Following his graduation from college, Tony Smith wanted to continue to live and work in Oxford. However the community was small and there were not a lot of readily available opportunities for a new college graduate. Fortunately tony had some experience working in the food service industry gained in the summers and throughout high school at his uncles’ restaurant in Buffalo. When Tony decided to leverage his experience into a small delivery and take out restaurant located close to the university he thought he had hit on a great idea. Tony would offer a limited fare consisting of the buffalo wings his uncle had perfected at his restaurant. Tony called his restaurant Wings of Fire. Although success came slowly, the uniqueness of Tony’s offering coupled with the growth of the university community made Wings of Fire a success.

Tony’s business was pretty simple. He purchased wings locally, and the wings were then seasoned and prepared in his restaurant. Once an order was received Tony cooked the wings, which were then delivered or picked up by the customer. His establishment was small and there was no place for customers to dine in the restaurant. However his wings proved so popular that over time Tony hired several employees including three delivery drivers. Business was steady and predictable during the week, with the biggest days being the home football Saturdays.

A little over a year ago the city really began to grow and expand. Tony noticed that his business was beginning to suffer when other fast food delivery restaurants opened around campus. Some of these restaurants were offering guarantees such as "30 minutes or its free." Tony’s Wings of Fire now had to compete with fish tacos, specialty pizzas and gourmet burgers. Most of these new restaurants however were dine in establishments that provided carry out and delivery as a customer convenience. However Tony was certain that he would need to offer a delivery guarantee to remain competitive with the newer establishments.

Tony was certain that a delivery guarantee of "30 minutes or its free" could easily be accomplished every day except on football Saturdays. Tony thought that if he could offer a 30 minute guarantee on his busiest day he would be able to hold onto and perhaps even recover market share from the competition. However before he was willing to commit to such a guarantee, he wanted to ensure that it was possible to meet the 30 minute promise

He knew it would be no problem for customers to pick up orders within 30 minutes of phoning them in. However he was less confident about delivering orders to customers in 30 minutes or less. Not only would the wings need to be cooked and packaged but the delivery time might be affected by the availability of drivers. Tony decided that he needed to analyze the opportunities further.

As a part of his analysis Tony decided to take a random sample of deliveries over five different football weekends. Cooking time and packaging time were not considered in his analysis because wings were not cooked for individual orders. Rather, large number of wings were cooked at a single time and then packaged in boxes of 12. Tony therefore decided to focus his analysis on the time required to deliver cooked and packaged wings. He collected information on the amount of time an order had to wait for a driver (the pickup time) as well as the amount of time required to transport the wings to the customer (the driver time). The sampled information is in the file Wings of Fire (ATTACHED). Tony is not willing to offer the guarantee on football Saturdays unless he can be reasonably sure that the total time to deliver a customers’ order is less than 30 minutes on average. Tony would like to know how likely it is that the total time to make a delivery would take more than 30 minutes. Based on the sample data should Tony offer the guarantee? What percent of the Saturday deliveries would result in a customer receiving a free order? What recommendations might help him improve his Saturday delivery times?

Answer 1

1. The central issue(s) of the case is Tony needs to know how likely will he be able to deliver the the wings within 30 minutes on every football Saturdays as on these saturdays it was really difficult for him to deliver the wings within 30 minutes considering even the availability of the drivers. Because rest of the days, Tony was sure of delivering wings to its customers. He just needed to ensure for the football saturdays to give a promise to its customers for 30 minutes delivery or free.

2. The facts of the case are:

*Tony's business was a success but he needed to be competitive in order to maintain his business.

* With other restaurants coming up, Tony had to face competition with variety of food products such as fish tacos, specialty pizzas and gourmet burgers.

*Competition was not limited to only food products, it was also from different services such as dine-in restaurants and 30 minutes delivery or free. Tony did not provide dine-in service or fastest delivery.

*Other fact is it was really difficult to deliver wings on football saturdays within 30 minutes.

*Even availability of drivers play an important role in delivering products, so this also counted for the analysis.