Amy’s Bread: Changing the Recipe for Success

Amy’s Bread first opened in a tiny combined wholesale and production location in Hell’s Kitchen in 1992. Twenty-two years later, Amy’s Bread had grown to the large production facility, three retail locations in Manhattan, 200 employees, and $13M in sales. Amy made many critical decisions over the years but in 2012, with less than a year’s notice from her lessor, Amy had to find a new location for her entire production facility, which served both her retail and wholesale customers. After a very difficult and time-consuming analysis, Amy leased and completely renovated a 33,000 square foot building and moved her production facility and administrative headquarters from Manhattan to Queens. On the heels of this major organizational change, Amy was faced with the strategic challenge of a lease ending on one of her three retail locations. This case explores risk management and large-scale organizational change. It was developed to provide students an opportunity to apply organization change and risk management models to real situations.