STRATEGIC CASE: Sundown Bakery

When Carol Teinchek and Bruce Marshall first started Sundown Bakery, the business was fairly simple.
Carol ran the shop up front, while Bruce ran the bakery and ordered supplies. When the business began to
grow, Carol hired two part-time clerks to help out in the shop. Marina had moved to the country two years
ago from El Salvador, and Kim was a newly arrived Korean working his way through college. Bruce
hired Maurice, a French Canadian, as an assistant. T he ovens were soon running 24 hours a day,
supervised by Maurice, who was now master baker, and two assistants on each of three shifts. Marina and
Kim supervised the shop because Carol was usually too busy managing general sales distribution to spend
much time with customers. Bruce still spent 3 or 4 hours a day in the bakery whenever he could get out of
his office, but he spent most of that time coordinating production and solving problems with Maurice. W
ithin the next year, Sundown expanded from its original location, adding two new shops as well as two
kiosks in local malls. Carol and Bruce hired a new operations manager, Hans Mikelson, formerly a
regional manager of a national chain of coffee shops. Hans had plenty of new ideas about how to operate
an expanding business: He launched a website, added an extensive range of drinks and meal items to the
menu, and instituted two dress codes—one for all counter help and another for kitchen employees.
He also put together an employee manual to save time orienting new employees. Hans announced all of
these changes by memos, which store managers distributed to the employees. Sundown’s expanding size
led to a change in the company. The family feeling that was strong when Sundown was a small operation
was less noticeable. The new employees barely knew Bruce and Carol; as a result, there was less give-
and-take of ideas between the owners and workers. Hans’ memos on the dress code and the employee
manual created a crisis. Old-time employees were furious about receiving orders from “the bureaucrats,”
as management came to be called. Bruce and Carol recognized the problem and wanted to keep the lines
of communication open, but they weren’t sure how to do so. “I’m just a baker,” Bruce confessed in
exasperation. “I don’t know how to run a big company.” A nother set of challenges grew out of the
changing character of the employees. In the original location alone, Sundown now employed workers
from seven different countries. José, who was born in Brazil, confessed to Bruce that he felt
uncomfortable being managed by Carol. “It’s nothing personal,” he said, “but where I come from, a man
doesn’t take orders from a woman.” The Sundown employee profile was different in other ways. Two of
the assistant bakers were openly gay; one of the sales clerks got around by wheelchair. C arol, Bruce, and
Hans know that good products alone aren’t enough to guarantee Sundown Bakery’s continuing success.
They need to improve the quality of communication among the growing team who make and sell their
products.