Mingming.zhang
Ba499
Bonnie Adam
2rd Dec, 2014 I chose to research John's Mountain Home Bakery located in Lacey, Washington. John's Bakery is a family run business that started thirty years ago. They make a wide variety of donuts, including: maple bars, apple fritters, old fashioned donuts, cinnamon twists, and filled donuts. They also have a wide variety of cookies, muffins, and beverages, as well as some new additions, such as: sandwiches and gluten free baked goods. Through this project, I immersed myself into their business to learn the internal, external strategies and their leadership. I explored how the determined the layout of the facility for maximum efficiency, how they determined their service and product, how they work with their suppliers, their strategy for forecasting demand, the leadership and structure of their business by interviewing their manager, John’s daughter, Mary. As a small business in lacey, they do not have too much competition. As a result, they put emphasis on the internal strategies in order to provide better service. The baked goods at John's Bakery are either homemade or made from a mix they ordered through their supplier, BakeMark. They have had the same recipes and items for the past thirty years. They do not branch out and create new products often. However, when they design a new recipe, they used quality function deployment (QFD), taking requests and recommendations from their loyal customers. Next, they pick one or two methods requested many times and make sure the materials, are available and cost-effective from BakeMark. They not only consider the material cost, but also the labor cost and time cost. If the processes of making a new product involves too many employees or consume too much time, they will give up the idea. Meanwhile, they compare the new design with their competitors, such as Heavenly Donuts,