ENTR$2210$ Intrapreneurship Case Study $(20\%)$

The owner of Meuwly$$s Artisan Food Market has hired you as an innovation and intrapreneurship consultant. You will analyze their situation and prepare a presentation detailing your recommendations to help Meuwley$$s increase its level of innovation and intrapreneurship.

Assume you are pitching your ideas directly to the business owner.

Also, assume you are competing with the rest of the class for this client's business. So$,$ your recommendations need more than the "obvious" answer $($e$.$g$.$ Create a suggestion box, Hire better people, Reward creativity, etc.$).$ You need to present something more than the client could have thought up on their own. This does not necessarily mean you have to come up with an idea that has never been thought of before. Instead, you might take an "old" idea and creatively repurpose it for your client.

Be sure to explain why the recommendations you are presenting are the best possible solutions. Prove you are experts in innovation and that your team deserves to get paid.

See the assignment instructions for complete details on what your submission should include.

Every decision an entrepreneurial founder makes has consequences. The hope is that strategic decisions lead to increased revenue and profits, but that of course is not always the case. Some decisions lead to a loss in sales. This is very much against the the mantra of the typical business owner: $$Grow or die.$$ Peter Keith, one of the founders of Meuwly$$s Artisan Food Market, has recently made the decision to purposefully shrink his business. He knows this will have consequences, but he hopes this decision will not lead to the eventual demise of his entrepreneurial baby.

Meuwly$$s $($www$.$meuwlys.com$)$ was founded in $2016$ by three business partners: Peter Keith, Will Kotowicz and Glendon Tan. Initially, the business launched as a subscription food$-$box service. But the plan was always to have a retail storefront, and in the summer of $2018$ that become a reality. Since then, Meuwly$$s Artisan Food Market has served happy food connoisseurs from their $124$ Street location in Edmonton.

The name $$Meuwly$$s$$ is a homage to Kotowicz$$s great$-$grandfather, Joe Meuwly, a butcher who immigrated from Switzerland to Canada in the $1930$s$.$ Meuwly$$s attempts to harness the heritage of quality foods and strong community commonly found within immigrant communities. Their focus is on high quality meats, cheeses, condiments, and other niche food products not easily found elsewhere in Alberta. Meuwly$$s also takes immense pride in buying many of their products from local producers. Keith feels being locally focused is a competitive advantage for Meuwly$$s

The deli market in Edmonton is rife with competition. Specialty stores, like the Italian Centre Shop, chase after the consumer seeking high quality specialty foods. The seemingly infinite chain grocery stores in Edmonton each has a deli

for the price conscious customer. This extreme level of competition has forced Meuwly$$s to keep their business model extremely focused.

Meuwly$$s currently relies on several revenue streams:

$$ Retail sales to customers through the storefront $($Approximately $50\%$ of revenue$)$

$$ Wholesale sales to other restaurants $($e$.$g$.$ Chartier, Biera$)($Approximately $20\%$ of revenue$)$

$$ Subscriptions services $($Approximately $20\%$ of revenue$)$

$$ Special events and renting out space within their store and kitchen to other food$-$based businesses make up the balance of their revenue.

$*$Meuwly$$s used to sell their products at several Farmers Market locations but based on the amount of work needed to operate they were never profitable.

In $2020,$ Meuwly$$s annual revenue topped $$1$ million. $2021$ and $2022$ annual revenue have dropped down to around $$750$ thousand per year. Some of this decrease is due to the challenges of running a hospitality business during the Covid pandemic, but it also coincides with a pivotal business decision. In the later end of $2022,$ Keith and Tan made the decision to buyout Kotowicz$$s share of the business.

The original vision for the three founding partners was for Meuwly$$s to be a large$-$volume wholesaler of cured meats $($e$.$g$.$ bacon, pastrami, capicola, sausages$).$ The driving force behind this vision was the expertise of Kotowicz. The decision to buyout Kotowicz has forced Meuwly$$s to change.

Glendon Tan is a founding partner but does not play a hands$-$on role in the business. Peter Keith has expertise in both food $($Red Seal Cook$)$ and business $($Commerce degree and MBA$).$ But despite that expertise, Keith does not have, or a desire to get, extreme expertise in the creation of fermented speciality meats $($e$.$g$.$ salami, chorizo$).$ This monumental change in the business has led to a multitude of operational changes within the business:

$$ Can no longer produce certain specialty meats in$-$house.

$$ Excess space and capacity within their kitchen.

$$ Only open $5$ days a week, $7\mathrm{.}5$ hours per day.

$$ Dropped from $12$ employees to now only $4.$

$$ Said