Kudler Fine Foods Kudler Fine Foods is a specialty food store with three locations currently. The owner and founder is Kathy Kudler and established in 1998. Kathy strides to give her customers the best specialty food with exceptional service. Kathy visits each of her stores regularly and does a lot of the back office work so her management team and sales associates can interact with the customers on a regular basis and keep up an exceptional rapport with repeat and new customers. While Kathy is happy to do all the back office work, she would still like to interact with her clients to keep her presence known and is able to hear what customers are saying and any feedback that is given. While Kudler Fine Foods is the only known specialty food store around there is no known competitor in their geographical region. Ways that Kathy can keep competition up is to build her catering side of the business and keep prices reasonable for her products. Having a catering service offered by her industry will help boost sales as long as it is marketed in the right places and properly. Another way to stay on the up and up of competition is to offer gluten free products. Even though Kathy is not basing her products on the healthy side but on the high end quality side, by having a gluten free menu and products for her customers will help sales increase due to the demand for gluten free foods now (Kudler Fine Foods, 2013). While looking at the marking surveys from 2012 and 2013 there are a lot of similarities and not may differences. One that stood out to me personally was the pricing question with the economy the way it is there is definitely reason behind the answers given. The question asked was “the merchandise sold is a good value for the money.” Most participants either said agree or disagree. Picking this question out of all that were asked is because if there is a competitor that arises in the future prices will be a major reason for customers to choose from. Another aspect that is taken out of this question is that the food is not priced correctly. This meaning that the food is not as spectacular to the customers as was thought to be. Altogether, however, customers are very pleased with Kudler Fine Foods and that is how it needs to be kept. By improving pricing and maybe even appeal to customers will help if competitors arise (Kudler Fine Foods, 2013). In order for Kathy Kudler to become more competitive if a market opens up for a more competitive market she should do a few things to her business to stay high up on everyone’s list for fine foods. One thing that should occur is that the catering business should be expanding and being marketed properly. Right now the catering portion of Kathy’s business is not expanding and being used much because it is not marketed properly. Kathy should be marketing Kudler Fine Foods Catering in party environments. Examples of such are weddings, graduation parties, communions, confirmations, and so much more. In order to get an income surplus of these catering events the catering service must be marketing properly. Kathy should be marketing her services in local newspapers and magazines that are specializing in parties and catering. In order to market properly, Kathy must also produce samples for such events. A little more spending may occur at first, however, that little deficit will end up becoming a surplus in the long run. One other way to help make her market more competitive is that Kathy can over rewards for shopping (Kudler Fine Foods, 2013). The market structure that best describes Kathy’s company Kudler Fine Foods would be a monopoly. The reasoning for this is because there is no competition in the geographical area and there does not seem to be a threat of a competition being created. No other food store has opened that is for fine foods for fine dining, which is Kathy’s goal and mission with her chain of stores. Yes, Whole Foods is based for healthy foods, however, Kudler is based for fine specialty foods for finer dinning. Ways that being a monopoly would have a positive effect on Kudler Fine Foods is that there is no other store that will cause the store the go out of business. Also this will keep customers loyal and purchasing from Kathy’s stores. Negative impacts could be that because there is no competition there is no drive for sales. Customers are already stating that prices are high and with the economy the way it is and inflation keeps rising it may cause Kathy to raise her prices. With raising prices it may lead loyal customers to minimize their purchases so that they can stay within their personal budgets. To improve Kathy’s long term goals as a company, being a monopoly is not always a good thing. As stated before, no competition can lead to sales diminishing which will affect opening new stores in the future due to not having enough income and revenue. Even though there is no need to change I believe Kathy would still keep improving and catering to her customers’ needs and demands. Kathy is a strong owner and always keeps her customers’ needs first (Kudler Fine Foods, 2013). Some strategies that I would recommend to Kathy would be to strategize her pricing of her products. If there is a distributor that is priced less than the distributor she is currently using that is something to consider. By having a distributor with fine quality and reasonably priced will help improve customer satisfaction. This will help the pricing issue as well as the quality for the price issue. Something that Kathy should definitely consider is hiring a business office manager for each store so that Kathy can still interact and gather feedback personally from her customers instead of hearing it second hand from associates. By having herself available to her customers will increase moral and loyalty. Personally, by seeing the owner of a company interacting and taking feedback from consumers is personable. By being personable to your consumers there opens up a window to bringing in more customers. Kudler Fine Foods as created by Kathy Kudler is a fine food store for specialty foods to create a finer dining experience at home for individuals. Kathy Kudler just needs to take a step back to examine how her company is as it is now and how it could be with a few modifications to help her business out and to help herself out as well. It never hurts to ask for help every now and then, especially if it will help improve your company.