Question: Mary Jones and Jack Smart have joined forces to start M&J Food Products, a processor of packaged shredded lettuce for institutional use. Jack has years

Mary Jones and Jack Smart have joined forces to start M&J Food Products, a processor of packaged shredded lettuce for institutional use. Jack has years of food processing experience, and Mary has extensive commercial food preparation experience. The process will consist of opening crates of lettuce and then sorting, washing, slicing, preserving, and finally packaging the prepared lettuce. Together, with help from vendors, they think they can adequately estimate demand, fixed costs, revenues, and variable cost per 5-pound bag of lettuce. They think a largely manual process will have monthly fixed cost of $50,000 and a variable cost of $2.50 per bag. They expect to sell 75,000 bags of lettuce per month. They expect to sell the shredded lettuce for $3.25 per 5-pound bag. Jack and Mary has been contacted by a vendor to consider a more mechanized process. This new process will have monthly fixed cost of $125,000 per month with a variable cost of $1.75 per bag. Based on the above scenario: a. Should Jack and Mary accept this offer to use a more mechanized process? Why or why not? (5 points) b. Would your recommendation change if Jack and Mary discovered that due to an increase in quality of the mechanized process, they can increase the selling price to $3.75 per 5-pound bag? Why or why not? (5 points) c. What other factors should Jack and Mary consider in making their decisions to accept or reject the vendors offer in (a) and (b) parts above? (2 points)

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