ColdKing Company is a small producer of fruit-flavored frozen desserts. For many years, ColdKing's products have had strong regional sales on the basis of brand recognition; however, other companies have begun marketing similar products in the area, and price competition has become increasingly important. John Wakefield, the company's controller, is planning to implement a standard cost system for ColdKing and has gathered considerable information from his co-workers on production and material requirements for ColdKing's products. Wakefield believes that the use of standard costing will allow ColdKing to improve cost control and make better pricing decisions.
ColdKing's most popular product is raspberry sherbet. The sherbet is produced in batches. Each batch requires 6 quarts of good raspberries and 10 gallons of other ingredients to yield a net of 10 gallons of sherbet. The fresh raspberries are sorted by hand before entering the production process. Because of imperfections in the raspberries and normal spoilage, 1 quart of berries is discarded for every 4 quarts of acceptable berries. Three minutes is the standard direct labor time for sorting needed to obtain one quart of acceptable raspberries. The acceptable raspberries are then blended with the other ingredients; blending requires 12 minutes of direct labor time per batch. After blending, the sherbet is packaged in quart containers. Wakefield has gathered the following pricing information.
(a) ColdKing purchases raspberries at a cost of $.80 per quart. All other ingredients cost a total of $.45 per gallon.
(b) Direct labor is paid at the rate of $9.00 per hour.
(c) The total cost of material and labor required to package the sherbet is $.38 per quart.
Required:
(1) Develop the standard cost for the direct cost components of a 10 gallon batch of raspberry sherbet. The standard cost should identify the standard quantity, the standard rate, and the standard cost per batch for each direct cost component of a batch of raspberry sherbet.
(2) As part of the implementation of a standard cost system at ColdKing, Wakefield plans to train those responsible for maintaining the standards in the use of variance analysis. Wakefield is particularly interested in discovering the causes of unfavorable variances.
(a) Discuss the possible causes of unfavorable material price variances and identify the individual(s) who may be responsible for these variances.
(b) Discuss the possible causes of unfavorable labor efficiency variances and identify the individual(s) who may be responsible for these variances.