Kristen’s Cookie Company Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Introduction

            Two Students, I and my roommate are planning to open a new business in our own campus. The name of the business has been decided as Kristen’s Cookie Company. The main objective of this business would be that here the students of the campus could get fresh cookies which would be just made on their order. They could order the cookies in the late hours of night and the business would operate for a total of 4 hours so the most suitable timings would be from 8pm to 12am. The business would fulfill the hunger needs of the students that want to eat freshly made cookies and that too with the mixture of their desired ingredients and flavors.

kristen cookie case study solution

Problem Diagnosis

            The preliminary plans have been made by me and my roommate and the initial costs for the ingredients and the packaging boxes have been estimated. The electricity charges would be none as it is being paid by the landlord of the apartment. The main ingredients that would be used to make the cookies are raisins, walnut, coconut, chopped heath bars, M&Ms, chocolate chips and dough.

The equipment would not have to be purchased as they are already present. The equipment include one food processor, one oven, cookie trays and spoons. However, now the issue is to determine and set the prices for the cookies and also set policies and rules for accepting the orders. It also needs to be identified that how much total time would be needed for this business each night, what would be the estimated profit for each partner, what would be the demand for the company’s cookies as compared to the packaged cookies from outside shops.

Further, issues related to bottlenecks, cycle time reduction, valuable time of each partner and the discount policies are also needed to be determined in order to make the business convenient for myself and my roommate and profitable. Along with this, the policies for rush orders, for the cancellation of orders and offering special rates also need to be analyzed.

Analysis

            The complete analysis has been performed for the Kristen’s Cookie Company with the information for the different steps in the cookie making process as provided in the exhibits. However, certain assumptions have also been made regarding the prices to be charged, discounted to be offered, labor costs etc.

Rush Order Time

            The first step begins with the washing of the bowl and the mixing of all the ingredients. This step is done by myself. All the ingredients are mixed and then for processing are placed in the food processors. The total time required for this step is 6 minutes and the maximum dozens that could be prepared by me are 3 dozens.

Kristen’s Cookie Company Case Solution

The time remains same at 6 minutes no matter I prepare one, two or three dozens. The next step comprises of dishing up or spooning all the ingredients onto the tray and the total duration for this process is around 2 minutes. This means that minutes are required per each tray and multiple trays could not be prepared at the same time. The next step is performed by my roommate who places the cookies into the oven which takes around 1 minute including the time for setting up the timer for the oven.

The baking time takes around 9 minutes. After the completion of this time, the roommate takes out the cookies and they take 5 minutes to cool down. After the cookies are cooled, the roommate packs them and receives the payment from the customer. This altogether takes 2 minutes and then 1 minute respectively. In this way the cumulative process time for preparing at least 3 dozens of cookies is around 26 minutes. This could be seen in the calculation performed a shown in the table below:

The cumulative process time as shown above is 26 minutes. However, if we divide the total activity time into pre baking, baking and post baking time then, it would be as follows.................

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