In December 2019, Throwback Brewery, a small brewery and farm-to-table restaurant in New Hampshire, had many things working in its favor: a loyal customer base, a strong culture and long-tenured Team Leaders who had helped to make the brewery the success it had become. At the same time, Throwback Brewery struggled with internal issues such as pay disparity among its employees and a lack of effective communication between the owners Nicole and Annette and their employees. To address these issues and keep the company on a growth trajectory, Nicole and Annette wondered if a more formal talent management system was needed to assess staff performance. In hopes of improving upon the company's shortcomings and aligning Throwback Brewery for continued growth and success, Nicole and Annette consider talent management options including a personnel performance appraisal process.

The learning objective for this article is to present the reader with some basic and intermediate strategies for teaching case studies in an online classroom environment. The authors draw upon their considerable experience to describe a number of classroom situations and provide tips, tools and techniques that the reader will immediately be able to bring back to their online classroom. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the urgency to quickly develop skills for the online higher education classroom. The general outline of this paper is as follows: The authors begin with some preliminary considerations regarding how to set the stage for online case instruction. The authors then discuss some practical and pedagogical issues to consider as an instructor designs their online course. Next, the authors present a brief overview of some synchronous, asynchronous and hybrid online case teaching approaches. Academic integrity issues are discussed, as well as a brief debate regarding the future of online higher education.

Russian River Brewing Company's [RRBC] owners and founders, Vinnie and Natalie Cilurzo, grew their business into one of the largest craft breweries in Sonoma County, California, from 2003 to 2016. RRBC's success surpassed the Cilurzos' initial expectations, as they were able to increase production fourfold and RRBC became one of the top five craft beer producers in the region. RRBC won multiple awards for the quality of its beers, in particular for the seasonally produced and allocated cult brand, Pliny the Younger. By 2015, the Cilurzos had paid off all outstanding debt and purchased 100 percent of the firm's equity using internally generated cash flows. However, RRBC's production and consumer retail infrastructure were insufficient to meet spikes in consumer demand. For over a decade, the Cilurzos largely dismissed the idea of expanding, but in spring 2016, discussions between the couple about investing in a second brewpub to expand production got more serious. As the Cilurzos analyzed RRBC's internal and external environment, they searched for ways to find consensus regarding expansion.

This case takes place as Señor Sisig has had three years of increasing success. The case highlights founder Evan Kidera, and the business as a whole, in Señor Sisig's efforts to continue the company's success and in pursuing the best growth options. Señor Sisig has received great acclaim in its early years. Founder Evan Kidera feels great pressure to capitalize on the opportunities presented to Señor Sisig as a result of the hard work in those early years, and at the same time does not want to over-stretch Señor Sisig's reach. Beyond maintaining business as usual, Kidera was considering three growth opportunities for Señor Sisig: (1) Add more food trucks, (2) expand operations to package products for sales to food retailers, and (3) open a bricks-and-mortar restaurant.

In late spring 2013, Nakedwines.com (NWC) founder and CEO Rowan Gormley brought his team together to prioritize initiatives and formulate a strategy. Five years earlier, Gormley and other Virgin Wines' veterans founded NWC in the United Kingdom, with significant backing from a German family wine company. Naked Wines' business model involved raising money directly from subscribers via the Internet, using these revenues to fund winemakers around the world, who in turn created new brands, which were consigned to NWC and then sold directly via the Internet to subscribers ("Angels") at a discount and to non-subscribers at a premium. Some industry observers considered NWC's business model "disruptive" with respect to how wine was traditionally marketed and sold, i.e. via distributors and retailers. Others opined that NWC was little more than a traditional wine club that used crowdfunding and social media technologies. NWC expanded to Australia and the United States in 2012, at which time NWC leased a Napa office and a Kenwood (Sonoma), California winery for wine production, storage, shipment, and wine tastings. NWC's Angels, who represented 95 percent of NWC's customers, had exclusive access to a mobile application to rate and purchase wines. By spring 2013, NWC had reached breakeven, signed up over 100,000 Angels, and forecasted reaching 200,000 Angels and $96 million in sales by year's end. While NWC's management was pondering which of the initiatives deserved the highest priority (acquiring new customers, retaining customers, or rethinking the mobile app strategy), the most pressing issues involved capacity and capital to grow. The case is intended as a lead-off case for a strategic management course, but also works well in information technology courses.

In early February 2009, executives from a U.S. wine importer, W. J. Deutsch & Sons (Deutsch), met in White Plains, New York, to try and reach a consensus on how to respond to changes in the marketplace. Wine consumers had begun purchasing less expensive wines, or "trading down," amidst a global recession in 2008-2009, reversing a five-year "trading up" trend. Inventories ballooned in the wine industry supply chain. Some producers and importers, unable to sell stocks, went into default. After an initial failure in the late 1990s to create an import brand with Casella Wines in Australia, Deutsch found success with the [ yellow tail ] brand - the number one Australian wine export and U.S. import from 2003-2008. John Casella, Managing Director of Casella Wines, suggested repositioning the [ yellow tail ] brand, priced at $4.99 - $5.99 per 750ml bottle, while Deutsch's founder, Bill Deutsch, and his son, Peter (CEO), could not agree on a strategy.

From 2000-2010, John Williams, co-founder of Frog's Leap Winery in California, invested in dry farming, organic, and biodynamic agriculture; geothermal and solar power; year-round employment and benefits for immigrant workers; and the industry's first LEED-certified tasting room. Despite static production, inventory and debt load grew. In May 2011, Williams how to grow Frog's Leap sustainably.

After celebrating their nineteenth harvest and seventh year as California producers and marketers of premium wine in September 2007, the Mexican-born owners of Ceja Vineyards were considering whether or not to make a concerted effort to target U.S. Hispanic consumers. Doing so would enable Ceja to capitalize on its heritage as one of the first Hispanic-owned and operated wine businesses in America, but this was no easy decision. Targeting the emerging and potentially vast U.S. Hispanic consumer segment might require extensive repositioning of Ceja's premium varietal wine brands, result in a diminution of effort to sustain its rapidly growing wine club, pose additional future expenses for promotion of wine consumption to U.S. Hispanic consumers, and erode the high-end premium wine brand. In addition, the Hispanic wine consumer living outside the U.S. represented another high potential market opportunity and was of serious interest to Amelia Ceja, co-founder of the winery, and her family partners.

Rajeev Samant, founder of Sula Vineyards, was a pioneer in the nascent Indian wine industry. After selling off a minority equity stake to private investors in 2005 to raise funds for expansion of his winery, Rajeev in mid 2007 again faced the challenge of deciding whether or not and if so, at what rate to grow Sula to meet forecasted rapid growth in demand for Indian wines. He developed financial projections to present to Sula's board. Rajeev now needed to decide on the appropriate plan to present to his board as well as the anticipated level and sources of funding needed to support this plan. In seeking new funding, Rajeev was mindful of the tradeoffs inherent in new equity financing, which could lead to a further dilution of ownership control, versus new debt financing, which would place additional claims on future cash flows and increase Sula's financial risk.