It was June 2021 and the international tourism industry was beginning to show signs of revival after the COVID-19 global pandemic. Small business owner Tony Byarugaba was surveying the scenic grounds surrounding his tourist lodge in Uganda. Byarugaba had built his enterprise by offering international clients a superior African vacation that included Uganda and the neighbouring countries of Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. From his beginnings as a self-taught tour operator, Byarugaba had diversified into the hotel business. His two early-stage companies, Mamaland Safaris and Woodland Lodges, had already survived very tough times—a global recession, the outbreak of Ebola, and, most recently, the pandemic.<br><br>Byarugaba now had to weigh the potential risks and rewards of a number of options for ensuring the growth and stability of his businesses. As a small entrepreneur with limited access to capital and labour, he could only afford to choose one direction to pursue. The future of his company depended on making the right choice.<br><br><p><p align="center"><b>This case was the first prize winner of the 2022 John Molson Business Ownership Case Writing Competition.<b/><p/>
Lil Mixins was a Philadelphia-based infant health company founded in 2017 with a dual commitment to purpose and profit. Motivated by her experiences as a mother of a son who had several food allergies, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) developed and launched a product line of powders that could be mixed in infants’ diets to immunize them against food allergens. She kept the price low to make it easily endorsable by pediatricians and insurance payers and more available to lower-income households. After three years of operations, however, the adoption rate was slower than projected. The CEO considered introducing a new higher-priced product that could keep the business going, but it excluded the broader market she had hoped to serve. How could she preserve her company’s accessibility and social goals while ensuring Lil Mixins’ viability?
Beginning with an ambitious, lean start-up effort in the highly competitive restaurant industry in Auckland, New Zealand, a husband-and-wife team built a small empire of successful fine dining Indian restaurants. Then came the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed their extreme vulnerability to external forces and the subsequent volatility of the restaurant industry. Their quick pivot to launching a line of Indian sauces for home cooks, Cassia at Home, was an instant success. As the couple contemplated different paths to recovery from the pandemic disruption, they wondered how they should expand their newest business into a sustaining brand and what the future of the existing restaurants would look like. Should they continue to expand the new retail business, abandon the move into manufacturing and broader distribution, or even focus on reviving their existing restaurant businesses?<br><br\><br><br\>An earlier version of the case was awarded Second Place in the 2021 John Molson Business Ownership Case Writing Competition sponsored by the Bob & Raye Briscoe Centre in Business Ownership Studies, John Molson School of Business, Concordia University.
Burlap & Barrel was an upcoming and successful public benefit corporation based in the Queens borough of New York City that imported spices from foreign farms and sold them to restaurants, gourmet food stores, home cooks, and other food services in the United States and other markets. In March 2020, when COVID-19 gripped the world and forced most food establishments to close down temporarily, the two co-founders of Burlap & Barrel saw an instant drop in their revenues because half of their sales volume normally came from restaurants. To stay afloat in the pandemic, they changed their focus from wholesale channels to a direct-to-consumer business model. Media coverage in major outlets helped demand increase, but the shift from wholesale to direct-to-consumer raised many supply chain inefficiencies in sourcing, storing, packaging, and transportation. In early 2021, as restaurants began gradually reopening, the two B&B co-founders became concerned about meeting the growing demand from both direct-to-consumer and restaurant orders while retaining their core ethical, environmental, and business values.
Two women entrepreneurs' early-stage company achieved notable success when they introduced an innovative zero-sugar product into the highly competitive beverage market. After navigating a rebrand, the co-founders were poised to scale their company through product line extension, thereby entering the even more competitive ready-to-drink beverage market. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated their direct-to-consumer marketing strategy. The co-owners had to determine both the timing of the new product launch and the marketing strategy.
Urban Axes introduced the Canadian indoor sport of axe throwing to the US market, beginning with one location in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 2016. Although Urban Axes was started as a “side hustle” by four friends with corporate jobs, it soon became apparent that the concept could be both popular and profitable. The partners quickly decided to become fully involved in the business to maximize its potential. This case features a woman protagonist as chief financial officer and the originator of the business plan. It is a novel, contemporary example of the first-mover principle, highlighting the risks and rewards of creating a new line of business in a competitive and volatile industry—in this case, the indoor or experiential entertainment industry.
In October 2015, the co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Tender Greens faced his most difficult decision yet: should the company continue to pay a premium price for sustainably sourced beef, or should it switch to conventionally raised beef to boost profit margins and improve the company’s prospects for national growth? Tender Greens, a thriving fast-casual restaurant chain in California, was ready to expand its operation to the East Coast with backing by equity investors. As the expansion plans grew closer, the CEO began to address the foreseeable supply chain issues that his company would face with the next level of expansion. The company had faced sustainably raised beef supply shortages before, but this time the CEO had more stakeholders to satisfy. He faced a dilemma, one that required him to weigh competing stakeholder interests, the company’s stated values, and significant financial implications to arrive at the best long-term outcome for the company. What would be the best way for the company to achieve scale while maintaining a commitment to food that was local, sustainable, and affordable?
In the summer of 2018, after over 25 years of leading AREUFIT Health Services, Inc. (AREUFIT), the founder and president of assessed her company’s position in the evolving health services market. She had grown AREUFIT from a sole proprietor start-up to its current position as the Philadelphia region’s award-winning provider of preventive health and biometric screenings, corporate health and disease prevention programs, and wellness services, with annual revenues that exceeded US$1 million. The founder had spent the last three years working with an outside consultant in preparation for the next stage in the life cycle of her company. When a competitor approached her with an offer to buy AREUFIT she knew she had to make some tough decisions, while remaining true to her values and business practices. She wanted to preserve the company and culture she had built, protect her key employees, and ensure that the brand reputation of AREUFIT would endure.