You are the owner of a local organic food market in an urban area at the crossroads of four farming communities that supply fresh, organic foods. As the owner of the market, you are interested in growing the business. Customers in the area have been asking local vendors for more organic and locally sourced fresh food options. You decide to create a catering service for clients within 25 miles of the market to celebrate the market’s 10-year anniversary. You plan to start this catering business in 30 days to address the increasing market need for organic, fresh catering. Catering orders will be prepared and packaged at the organic food market and then driven to the customer’s location. Lunch orders will be delivered within 60 minutes of receiving the order. Special event catering orders will require one week to fulfill the order. The catering company has one van that will be used exclusively for catering services. You have identified the following goals for this catering business:
• The catering business will need to be able to sell the same quality, organic foods that are sold in-store and supplied daily.
• The catering customers can be no farther than 25 miles from the store so that food can be delivered within an hour.
• The catering business should be profitable within one year.
• The cost of developing the catering business should not negatively impact the in-store retail operations budget, staffing, events, and farmer partnerships.

You plan to launch the catering business by providing a free catered lunch to the first 10 businesses that subscribe to the weekly lunch catering services. The catered lunch for each business will be for up to 30 people and will be held at a local conference center ballroom at noon on a day of the customer’s choosing. The budget for this launch of 10 catered lunches is $7,000.
Two weeks before the launch, you are working with catering staff to calculate the costs of the launch to date, review tasks that need to be completed, and assess the overall impact of catering on in-store retail operations. You learn that the costs associated with the launch of the free catered lunches have already exceeded $7,700. Additionally, a local farmer that provides the fresh lettuce for lunch salads notifies you that the lettuce will not be available in time for the catered lunch. No other local farmers have lettuce available for purchase, and the only option is to use nonorganic lettuce in order to keep the menu as communicated to the 10 businesses subscribing to the weekly lunch catering services.
A financial company representative wants to inquire about possibly financing your company for this project. The representative sends a request for information to you as listed in the requirements for this task.

A. Discuss options and considerations for transporting the product described in the scenario to the retail facilities by doing the following:

1. (A1) Identify two different product packaging options and explain why you chose them.

2. (A2) Identify two different potential risks to consider when storing your product and describe how you will mitigate each risk.

3. (A3) Describe two transportation modes to move your product from the manufacturer to the retail facilities. Then explain an advantage and a disadvantage of each chosen transportation mode.

4. (A4) Describe two different characteristics of the transportation management system (TMS) that
will aid in transporting the product. CLARITY - Describe two different characteristics (e. g., GPS and RFID are part of the same characteristic of “Track and Trace”) of the Transportation Management System (TMS). There are five (5) different characteristics of TMS - (1)- route optimization - (2) - track and trace - (3). Contract Management - (4) - Integration with other systems like Enterprise Resource Planning - ERP - (5) - Reports and Business Intelligence. TMS is a logistical computer system for Logistics and Operations Managers including elements like GPS, RFID, and a computer oversight for tracking. The Learning Resource and many sources on the Internet can provide more information. Just remember to properly source any outside information in accordance with the “Sources” information in the RUBRIC and mentioned below.

B. Discuss how you would address a barrier or bottleneck in transporting your product to the retail facilities by doing the following:

1. (B1) Describe how a barrier or bottleneck from the scenario can affect transporting the product.

2. (B2) Choose either the Lewin or ADKAR change management model and discuss how you would apply each step of the chosen model to address the barrier or bottleneck from part B1.

3. (B3) Discuss how you will address an ethical consideration for the barrier or bottleneck from part B1.