Minicase $2$

Rising Action bakery and Power Flour. LLC$.$

Joe Reeka is a senior sales representative for Power Flour, LLC$,$ a supplier of flour to private$-$label brands

in supermarkets as well as to bakeries. Power Flour has developed a new white flour with a

nontraditional bleaching agent, which will allow for the baking of bread products with lower

carbohydrates but without a change in taste. Joe feels this new flour product would be ideal to sell to

Rising Action Bakery and has sent information on the new flour to its purchasing department.

Rising Action bakery is a small but growing chain of bakeries in Colorado, specializing in "home$-$baked"

premium bread products. Its products are baked at a central bakery and shipped to its retail stores. The

CEO is Ana Paula Gutierrez, and he has a small senior management team consisting of a production and

operations manager, Dawn Chiles; a sales and marketing manager, Nimesh Patel; a purchasing manager,

Joan Wells; a finance and accounting manager, Matt Simon; and a store coordination manager, Dan

Levy. Each manager leads an assistant manager$/$coordinator and an executive assistant. Rising Action

also has a store manager and staff for each of its $24$ retail stores.

Ana Paula and her five managers are meeting to discuss the results of the sales and marketing

department's recent market research study on the future of low$-$carbohydrate diets. The results

indicated that the trend may not continue, but the low$-$carb bread products would be in high demand

for at least the next two to three years. Sales Numbers have been down since the rise in popularity of

low$-$carbohydrate diets, and Nimesh is concerned with maintaining, or hopefully increasing, Rising

Action's market share by adding low$-$carb products to the marketing mix. Dawn's main concern is to

produce the low$-$carb bread efficiently and without having to purchase new equipment. Dawn's

assistant manager handles determination of quantities for ordering and would be involved with

developing the new bread product and determining the type and amount to flour to be used. Matt is

concerned that this will be a large investment in a possibly short$-$lived product and that the forecasted

budgets did not anticipate such an outlay for inventory expense.

Joan is worried about purchasing the right amount of flour for the production needs but also keeping

within the budgets determined by finance. Further, Joan is bound by Rising Action's policy of getting

three bids on supply purchases. Dan is excited at the prospect of new low$-$carb products for the retail

stores but must make the store managers aware of the changes. The stores would be instrumental in

collecting feedback from their customers to determine the success of the new products. Ana Paula

trusts the decision making of her management team, but ultimately she is responsible for the new

products and especially has a hand in developing recipes that are up to Rising Action's taste standards.

Joan's purchasing assistant, Janice, received the written sales information from Joe Reeka of Power

Flour about the new low$-$carb flour and has called him back for further information.