Amy’s Bread: Changing the Recipe for Success

Author
Paula Weber, Cathleen Burns, James Weber
Region
North America
Topic
Strategy & General Management
Length
10 pages
Keywords
organizational change
risk management
Kotter model
leadership
strategic planning
Student Price
$4.00
Target Audience
Undergraduate Students

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.

Learning Outcomes
  1. Distinguish most effective organization structure following the expansion
  2. Evaluate and apply a risk management model
  3. Discover and apply an organizational change model
  4. Analyze capacity issues and their impact on strategic decisions