Environmental Scan and Summary Kudler Fine Foods is local specialty store located in the San Diego area of California. Kudler isn’t the average grocery store; the company has been compared to Whole Foods and Trader’s Joes. Kudler is known to sell the finest food and wines. Currently, the company has three locations under the management of Kathy Kudler, the owner. The company wants to expand. Before the company can make the move to open a new store or expand a current location, it important to analyze the internal and external environment. Understanding the environment of the company will help the company understand its strengths and weaknesses. The internal environment involves within the company and how it managed. The internal environment includes the employees, store operations, and responsibilities. The external environment is how the company operates is affected by the outside environment. A summary of the Kudler’s internal and external environment will be analyzed to help the company determine alternative strategies. The internal environment at Kudler includes identifying the stakeholders, understanding the company’s social responsibility, and the Kudler’s economic, ethics, legal, and discretionary responsibilities. Kudler’s stakeholders consists its staff, customers, wholesale suppliers, banks, competition, and Kathy Kudler herself. Each stakeholder, rather internal or external, plays an important part within in the company. Kudler has a social responsibility to its stakeholders. The concepts of social responsibility are economics, legal, ethics, and discretionary. The economic responsibility for Kudler is to provide goods and services to its customers. The legal responsibilities are to ensure the stores are insured and that the company is complying with local and federal laws. The ethical responsibility is proper business behavior. According to Pearce and Robinson (2009), “Ethical responsibilities are obligations that transcend legal requirements. Firms are expected, but not required, to behave ethically” (p. 58). Kudler explains proper behavior required of the employees in the employee handbook. The company donates food to local homeless shelters and food pantries and buys from local farmers as a part of discretionary responsibility. The discretionary responsibilities enhance the Kudler’s image because its customers will buy from them because of supporting the local farmers. The external environment includes the economy, quality of farmers produce, and wholesaler strikes. These external environments are known as threats. The threats have a potential to harm the company whether directly or indirectly. Kudler mentioned on her strategic plan that the decline of the economy can affect the company. If the economy takes a turn for the worst, the company may see a decline in sales. Customers tend to cut back on shopping to save money. The famers may see a decrease in the production of their crops that can affect Kudler. Also, weather can affect production for farmers. Another external threat is strikes with wholesalers. If wholesalers internal operations encounter problems such as an employee strike, this can ultimately affect the sales at Kudler. Understanding the internal and external environments will help Kudler with alternative strategies to expand more rapidly. Kudler’s strategic plan expands on the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) of the company. The SWOT helps determine the important strategic factors for the company. Although internal environment can be controlled, the external cannot. However, Kudler can decide how the company will handle the threats if it should happen.

References
Pearce, J. A., & Robinson, R. B. (2009).Strategic management: Formulation, implementation, and control. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
University of Phoenix. Kudler Fine Foods. STR/581 Week Two. Retrieved February 1, 2010.