You are a Consultant for the professional service firm, BUSI 2083 LLP. Your firm specializes in providing a wide variety of internal business solutions for different clients. A consumer business partner within the firm notices your availability at 3:00 PM on a Friday afternoon and pulls you into a meeting with one of his high profile clients.

Dark and Bold Inc. manufactures a line of single-cup brewing machines for home and office use that brew a cup of coffee, tea, or hot chocolate in less than a minute. The machines use specially packaged portions of coffee, tea, or hot chocolate that can be purchased online directly from Dark and Bold or at Second Cup coffee shops who are licensed to distribute the company’s products. The appeal of the brewing machines is twofold. First, they offer a high level of convenience. The use of prepackaged coffee servings means no grinding of coffee beans and no mess. Also, the brewing machines have a water reservoir that for some models is large enough to make up to 20 cups of coffee. Second, the taste of each cup of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate is very consistent. The brewers’ pressurized system uses the same amount of water for each cup and the airtight seal used in the individual portions keeps the product fresh.

Additional Information

The company has three models of brewers that offer different features, such as the size of the water reservoir, the number of brewing sizes, and the types of filtering devices used in the machine. Data from the most recent fiscal year for the three models is shown below.

	Model
	Home Brewer	Office Brewer	European Deluxe
Sales volume (units)	12,000	30,000	6,000
Unit selling price	$150	$200	$300
Variable cost per unit	120	140	180
Contribution margin per unit	$30	$60	$120

Fixed costs are $1,500,000 per year. The company has no work in process or finished goods inventories. The company is facing increased levels of competition from manufacturers using similar brewing technologies and believes there is no room for any increases in unit selling prices.

Dark and Bold Inc. is unsure of the strategies to take in order to increase profitability. The engagement partner would like the following questions on his desk by Monday morning:

1. Calculate the company’s overall break-even point in sales dollars.
2. Calculate the sales dollars required for each product at the overall break-even level of sales calculated in (1) above.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

1 Calculate the companys overall breakeven point in sales dollars Total sales 150 12000 20090000 ... View the full answer