Amazing Grapes Wine 1

AMAZING GRAPE WINES

By Group 9

Duong Hong Duc 11200834

Nguyen Khanh Linh 11202188

Nguyen Ha Anh 11200206

Vuong Vu Duc Huy 11201814

Bui Thi Thu Hue 11201644

Mau Duy Anh 11204346

Marketing Management CLC 62C

Professor Pham Thanh Van

National Economics University

Ha Noi

12/11/2022
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When owners are not interested in selling

Can you believe that a firm which earned 3.5M dollar still cannot pay for their debt and

had a failure year in business? Yes you do not mishear at all, there was a company called

Amazing Grape whose owner ‘is more interested in sipping than selling’. This company is both a

small restaurant and a shop that specializes in fine wine. In this essay, by analyzing their

problems mainly is lack of the leadership, Group 9 will try to point out the solutions and the

lesson can be learnt from this particular circumstance.

First of all, what we – Group 9 – see in the business of Amazing Grapes Wine bar and

retail store is that it is full of mistakes. From the first impression, the physical store was not

carefully decorated both in and outside the building. Numerous boxes of old wine were thrown

everywhere and the whole store was ‘full of craps’. The layout was also unreasonable, with too

many choices that overcomes the filtering abilities of the customers – which means that the

customer can rarely choose what they want among that number of bottles. In addition, the wine

bar, which created around 46% of the revenue, occupied only 10% of the area and was located in

the corner of the store, while the kitchen was too small and presented a severe shortage of

equipment. All of that faults came from a very potential store, and we have to say that they were

all triggered by the absence of leadership as well as organized system.

Enthusiastic is not enough

We do not know whether the owners wanted to make profit, but we can be sure that they

did not make any effort for the store’s success. Despite the fact that this franchise cane from their

idea of ‘turning their hobby into a business’, even the employees infrequently saw their bosses

interact with the store. Indeed, as Greg and Bill visited their own store ‘2 or 3 times a month’,
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they absolutely could not point out the problems as well as fix them in the nick of time. Greg

even created a mini space for his band, which negatively affected the revenue of the store. Staff

meeting was never held, and 17 employees knew about nothing but their assigned tasks. That is

the reason why the business kept running in exchange for nothing but debts. In order to save this

firm, changes were necessary.

Changes for a better future

When Marcus came to the Amazing Grapes, he realized what the problems were and

immediately tried to come up with some solutions. He initially of 300 grand for 51% of his own

share, and fascinatingly 25% share for the employees, even more than the owners’. What he

wanted to do is creating a motivation for all the staffs, who love spending their time and effort

with Amazing Wines. At the same time, Marcus reorganized all the system by allocating

particular task for particular person, so that each person know about what they are doing and not

cover others’ part. After a few days so that the staffs can be familiar with the jobs, by getting the

agreement from 76% of firm’s share, he and the new team reconstructed as well as redecorated

the layout of Amazing Grapes. The bar was transformed into an eye - catching two sides ones,

whereas the kitchen was enlarged and fulfilled with new utensils. Bottles of wine were

rearranged in a more reasonable way that surrounded the widened seating area. In short, the

whole old Amazing Grapes was transformed into a more modern model that can appeal

customers more and more.

Business 101 for Staff team

Similarly, Marcus did a lot of different things to train his employees, who appear in the

physical store even more than him. Not only allocating tasks, he taught the staff how to behave,
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when to talks, and so on. Besides, while the store was shut down for reconstruction, Marcus

brought his staff team to other famous stores, and taught them about business by doing fun

activities. All of these worked well because we can see that Amazing Grapes is no longer a chaos

but an organized firm with well – trained staffs.

Valuable lessons can be witnessed in the case of Amazing Grapes

In conclusion, it is lucky that Amazing Grapes found a dedicated investors when it was

on the edge of bankruptcy. By seeing the wrongs of its own way, Marcus – the host of The Profit

Show – came up with tons of solutions that helped the store to earn profit. Marcus and this case

give us lots of lessons, start with the essential role of a leader. Marcus is the role model of a

leader who can not only connect his employees but also encourage them and give them

motivations to work. Although he do not have any gifted person in the business, but he know

how to separate the work reasonably and make his staff work with 200% of the effort. Moreover,

he made his move on the right time, and knew how to utilize the firm’s strength. For example,

Marcus immediately expanded the bar and kitchen area as he knew that was the one brought

financial advantage for the business. Last but not least, Marcus did not let the old owners to

make any bad attitude in front of staff team. Any bad decision would be eliminate by Marcus and

the one in charge of the activities.

References
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Lemonis, M, 2014. The Profit Episode 7 Amazing Grapes [Online] (April 8th 2014).