Company Q is a small local grocery store chain located in a major metropolitan area. They have recently closed a couple of stores in higher-crime-rate areas of the city, reportedly because these two stores were consistently losing money. After years of requests from customers, all of their stores have started offering a very limited amount of health-conscience and organic products—all of which were high margin items. When asked by the area’s food bank for donation of day-old products, management declined deciding instead to throw the food away, citing worries over lost revenues due to possible fraud and stealing by employees who might say they are donating the food.

The first area that Company Q could improve in would be community relations. By strengthening ties with the community through various events and promotions, people in low income areas would be more inclined to shop with Company Q and boost sales in what would be perceived as low income areas. Some examples of bringing additional customers in via promotions are coupon matching, holding special events outside of the store, such as a sidewalk sale, and a small fun fair. Also by extending more shopping deals such as a “10 for 10” sale, this will bring in more shoppers who are willing to spend money for low ticket items that will still bring a profit into the store. There are other ways a company can cut costs as well on the store side as well, such as working with distributors to lower buying prices for the store and seeking to lower in store costs for things such as cleaning supplies and so forth. By seeking to get more exposure out in the public about good sales they have, reaching out to the community by holding community events to draw in more customers, and working to cut expenses, they would be able to increase profits, improve their customer base, and be able to keep stores open in otherwise “high crime rate areas.”

The second area that Company Q can improve is in their adding of high margin items. By making not importing items from out of state and bringing in local growers, this could also tie into the first item that was listed by strengthening local ties to the community as well as lowering costs to bring in more customers by providing demanded items at a lower cost to customers. The store could also take this a step further by providing a sort of farmer’s market selection that would be stocked by nothing but local growers. Overall this is a good idea that can be easily strengthened by simply adding local growers into the execution of this plan.

The third area that Company not only could, but needs to improve their social responsibility in would be declining to donate food to the local food bank out of fear of theft concerns. The argument that employees would steal food rather than donate it is flimsy at best. There are a number of solutions that would allow Company Q to donate food without fear of theft from employees. The first solution would be to simply appoint a donation manager to handle the deliveries to the food bank themselves. This brings down the number of employees that would be suspected of theft down to one solitary person. This manager could also organize with the Food Bank to deliver on one day during the week. The manager would also be responsible for keeping track of what was going to be donated and to make sure that it wasn’t going to be stolen by other employees and have the authority to deliver appropriate punishments to employees who were caught stealing from the food bank donation supplies. The second solution that would ethically acceptable would be simply to have the food bank come to the store themselves to make a donation pick up. This has a lot of the later benefits of the first solution, mainly being the store would easily be able to keep track of what was being donated and what employees were gathering the foodstuffs for donation. Any respected food bank will be more than capable of making a drive to a store for a donation. These two solutions would be more than sufficient to fulfill their social responsibilities and improve Company Q’s relationship with the community.