Marble Slab Creamery: The Weighing Decision
Which weighing policy should Rob Hunter choose for the new franchise?

Xinya PAN (Thea)
#5665922
IMAcc Course-5Y07
Lecture Section 01
Instructors: Jacqueline Glenney, Joan Dundas
Goodman School of Business, Brock University
Oct 5, 2014

Executive Summary

Overview: The Marble Slab Creamery (Here and after known as "MSC"), which was established in 1983 in Huston, operates as a franchisor in ice cream and dessert industry and now owns 391 stores over the United States. With the Canadian headquarter located at Calgary, Alberta, it now has 22 locations in Ontario and 10 of them are still in development. MSC has done a pretty good job with average sells $1,853 per day in the summer under the management of Rob Hunter. So the company decided to open a new franchise in Waterloo in April 2009. This leaves Hunter only one month to figure out the appropriate weighing policy for the new franchise.
Main SWOT Points: In the SWOT analysis of MSC, its unique ice cream and special customer service must be a strength. MSC has strict ice cream making process to ensure the quality of products and the weighing policy makes customers enjoy ordering. For the weakness, the weighing policy and selling method can be time consuming and under this condition MSC may lose customers while they are queuing. The opportunity for MSC is the large potential customer base according to the location of their new franchise; students from two universities will bring a lot of chances. At last, competition is always a threaten, there are many local competitors located in the same plaza and this may posts new challenges to MSC.
Problem Analysis: Which weighing policy should be chosen to apply in the new franchise can lead to better operation is the problem need to be solve now. The problem is resulted by several reasons. First is the low efficiency due to the existing weighing policy; Second is the success of Bruijns makes Hunter hesitate about an alternative which can make the customers move faster; Third is Hunter must consider the consequences of the policy, the cost of overweight serve can be high and the reputation of the franchise can be ruined without a weighing policy. Consider the franchise is going to open next month and Hunter will need time to training employees, so he must make the decision within 15 days.
Alternatives and Criteria: There are four alternatives for Hunter at this point. First is applying the current weighing policy. Next is to weigh only during non-busy time. Then is choosing experienced stuff to do the weighing in order to enhance the efficiency. What’s more MSC can adapt a similar policy with Bruijns’ to weighing the ice cream as defined intervals. The three criteria also need to be considered, firstly, whether the problem of customers queuing for long time can be