Forty agents of a local real estate brokerage firm eat lunch at least twice weekly at a very popular pizza restaurant. The pizza restaurant recently began offering discounts for groups of 10 or more. Groups would be seated in a separate room, served individual bowls of salad costing $2 each, pitchers of root beer costing $3 each (each pitcher has a five-glass capacity), and medium, two-topping pizzas for $10 (ten slices each). The food would have to be ordered in advance.

Twenty of the members commit to eating three slices of pizza, three glasses of root beer, and one bowl of salad (a consumption pattern of (3,3,1)). The other 20 are more hearty eaters and commit to six slices of pizza, two glasses of root beer, and one bowl of salad (a consumption pattern of (6,2,1)). Each member of the group must pay an assessed amount for the lunch.

Required:

1. Determine the total number of pizzas, pitchers of root beer, and salads that must be ordered for the 40 employees.

2. One of the agents offered to determine the amount that each should pay. He suggested that the easiest way is assign the average cost to each person eating in the group. Based on this suggestion, how much would each person pay for lunch?

3. One agent objected to using average cost, noting that half of the people are much lighter eaters than the other half. Based on the large differences in consumption behaviors, he suggested forming two groups: one for the light eaters and one for the heavier eaters. Calculate the lunch cost for each member for each group.

Discuss the analogy to formation of focused value streams in a manufacturing environment. Calculate the cost that would be assigned using activity-based costing. What does this tellyou?