Written Assignment 3
Fuddruckers & Crystal coast music festival
Claudia Koerbler
Student ID: 1295982
EMBA, California Lutheran University
EMBA-511-GA01 - 21/OM/5: Project Management
Professor David W. Church, MBA, PMP
June 16, 2021
Table of Content
Written Assignment 3........................................................................................................ 1
1.
Abstract .................................................................................................................... 3
2.
Does serving as food vendor at Crystal coast music festival qualify as a project?
Why or why not? ........................................................................................................................ 3
3. What are the sources of uncertainty facing Kathryn Regan? Can anything be done to
mitigate the uncertainty? ............................................................................................................ 5
3.
Would you recommend Kathryn go with the limited or broad menu? How much of
each food item would you recommend Kathryn order? ............................................................. 6
Hint: you might consider simulating alternative scenarios ............................................... 6
4.
Based on your project order quantities, develop a budget for the project. ............... 7
5. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 7
6. References ..................................................................................................................... 9
1. Abstract
CRC Management Company as a franchisee of Fuddruckers, has been selected to be the
sole food vendor for the Crystal Coast Music Festival. The case study provides some input on
how Fuddruckers is thinking of setting up their menu and gives an overview of decisions
regarding the menu items, order quantities, and prices which need to be decided upon by
Kathryn.
In order to get to a final decision, several uncertainties, including the weather, attendance,
and the amount of food each attendee will consume complicates the decision making. The
questions below will identify and answer what some solutions for Fuddruckers could look like
to have a successful event and scale up the menu and hence sales prices for food.
2. Does serving as food vendor at Crystal coast music festival qualify as a project?
Why or why not?
Yes, it absolutely qualifies as a project, since there is a lot of food planning, budgeting,
estimation, and risks involved in providing vendor services to the music festival. I would
argue that it needs to be treated like a project to ensure we bear the Triple Constraint in mind
and plan the purchase and selling of food like any other project as well. After all, CRC as a
franchise of Fuddruckers wants to generate income out of their food vending business.
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In addition, taking up such vendor services involves a series of processes and steps
taken up by a project manager and in cooperation with other management staff it will help in
the control of the project in terms of progress, quality, changes, products, commitments, and
other critical concerns. The ultimate purpose of project control is to manage work during each
stage of the implementation lifecycle and to prepare the project for the next stage (Heagney,
2016).
Kathryn, as the director of marketing will need to perform quality control through-out
the implementation process. This will include project approval, for authorizing the
expenditure of funds, the statement of work, identifying agreements and assumptions of the
projects, work breakdown structure, management reviews. After the initial Work Breakdown
structure (WBS) is set up, a proper risk assessment, budget planning and engagement of
stakeholders is key to ensure a project’s success.
Speaking of setting up a team or identifying stakeholders, Kathryn should go ahead and
choose the project team. This means, the team should be set up with stakeholders who allow
Kathryn and the project managers to track work progress, respond to changes and manage
issues. In addition, she should and needs to be involved in controlling project quality to
confirm that the product is complete and developed in line with expectations.
In this case Kathryn will need to involve the business and technical staff in a range of
activities such as defining technical standards, setting business expectations, establishing
product requirements (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017).
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3. What are the sources of uncertainty facing Kathryn Regan? Can anything be
done to mitigate the uncertainty?
There are a lot of risks when carrying out food services. I would identify the biggest risk and
uncertainty to be weather and a potential disruption in supply chain of the delivery of food.
The latter can be mitigated through comprehensive and accurate communication with all
stakeholders, the earlier is something which needs to be factored into the risk assessment
since it is out of Kathryn’s and the festival’s control.
Weather attendance consumption analysis patterns show possible risks of having low
revenues. Also, there is concern over wastage if they do not decide the proper menu for the
music festivals. Food wastage will lead to losses as opposed to expected returns of
investment.
They are also risking of having required quantities of food in stock. The suppliers need
to be well informed of the required quantities once they decide on the menu option. There is
anticipated shortage costs beyond the lost profit if they run out of the items they set to deliver
at the festivals (Meredith et al., 2017).
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3. Would you recommend Kathryn go with the limited or broad menu? How
much of each food item would you recommend Kathryn order?
Hint: you might consider simulating alternative scenarios
and comparing the results of the simulation runs
The limited menu offers the best opportunity for the business since it doesn’t
overrun the budget and with the limited menu selection it keeps the cost of food
preparation low.
The “typical” festival food offer has limited risks and can be prepared easily, fast and
does not run the risk to expire or dry-up in the heat. I would suggest that the limited options
menu should consider burger as the most selling item in the list and attendees will have the
option to try out the much-advertised burgers.
This will save them the option of having chicken sandwich as one of the food options.
The three-day prior order helps them have a clear path of the meals, which they would need to
consider and gives them the chance to predict weather consumption patterns, which will work
well with Kathryn’s estimations. Besides, the limited menu options come in best since she
will have met with the event promoter before the event to get a clear information on the
expected attendees.
This leaves her with a clear understanding of the best route to take when it comes to
getting food stocked on time. I would recommend having 1.5 meals per person in attendance
assuming the weather is nice once you get the ticket sales data.
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4. Based on your project order quantities, develop a budget for the project.
Estimated
Hamburg
er
Hot Dogs
Potato
Turn out
8.0001-
Buns
Plates
Sales Tax
Chips
Patty
$1.01
$0.55
$0.40
$0.20
$0.15
1%
$1.01
$0.55
$0.40
$0.20
$0.15
1%
10.000
VIP (25)
Other
Number of
people
Rate $/per hour
Expens
es
Staffing
6
7
Tent
1
15
Gas Grill
1
15
5. Conclusion
To sum up, the case study has been interesting and important for our class since it gave
me some food for thought on what steps need to be taken as setting up a project.
Besides everything covered in this written assignment, I would like to point out that a
project doesn’t stop with its delivery. After a project is executed, we need to dig deeper and
go further in understanding how satisfied customers were and what some lessons learned of
the project could be.
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One way to do so would be to conduce a survey internally to the project team first to
understand what their experience was and learn from failures and successes of projects.
This would provide Kathryn with some tacit knowledge to reflect on the project and plan
accordingly for the next one. Of course, this can be done before a project starts if we have
similar projects to refer to and learn from.
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6. References
Gregoire, M. (2016). Foodservice organizations: A managerial and systems
approach. Pearson.
Heagney, J. (2016). Fundamentals of project management. Amacom.
Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to
planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Meredith, J. R., Mantel Jr, S. J., & Shafer, S. M. (2017). Project management: a
managerial approach. John Wiley & Son
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