EVANS FOODS CASE ANALYSIS Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

EVANS FOODS CASE ANALYSIS Case Solution

Problem Diagnosis

Hector Guerra, the Vice President of Operations at the Evans Food, was facing a dilemma for his company in April 2014. Evans Food was a $ 100 million company, which specialized in selling pork rind products, which were made out of the pork skin. Despite being a small company, the company sold these products to some of the largest retailers in the US market such as Wal-Mart, ALDI, Meijer and HEB. However, in the last few years, the cost of raw materials increased dramatically as a rapid increase in the prices of the pork skin. Nonetheless, the selling prices of the company’s products have not kept a pace with these rising raw material costs.

The costs of pork skin have increased globally mainly because of two main reasons. First of all, the demand for alternative protein as compared to the beef and chicken had increased significantly in China and Mexico. Secondly, the supply was affected negatively as a result of the pig virus, which had killed millions of piglets in China in 2010 and in the US in 2013. This caused a severe shortage of the pork products and led to the sharp increase in its costs for the pork skin. Guerra has three options ahead of him to resolve this dilemma. He could either, stay the course, increase the selling prices or expand the business operations in other international markets. This case analysis will define the strategic position of Evans Food in the US and then a recommendation will be made to the management of Evans Food.

Case Analysis

The analysis of the case has been performed by applying different strategic models and evaluation of the three options.

Strategic Models

The two strategic models, which have been used to analyze and determine the strategic position of Evans Food Company are SWOT analysis and the Porter’s Five Forces Framework.

SWOT Analysis

The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Evans Food depicted in the case are as follows(Quincy, 2013):

Strengths

Evans Food has grown into a $100 million business within a short period of time. The company is the supplier of pork rinds and pork pellets to some of the largest retails of US such as Wal-Mart, ALDI, Meijer and HEB. The astute management and strong leadership style of Alejandro Silva helped the company to growth the business and nowadays, the company sells 40% of its products to major markets outside the US such as Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala and Dominican Republic. The company had sold its products to the consumers either through its own brand name of Mac’s Pork Rinds or through private labels for the large retailers mentioned above. The company was also competing strategically with its closest competitor, Rudolph Foods.

Weaknesses

Evans Food was now facing financial difficulties and cash flow problems (exhibit 1). The reason for this was that the management of the company had not been able to maintain its pace with the increasing costs of pork skin. It seems that this is a weakness in the management of the company as they have not been able to maintain their pace with the rising costs of pork skin. If they would have slowly and gradually increased the prices of their products, then they could have avoided this strategic dilemma. Lastly, the margins of the company were reducing and Evans Food was losing money on each product sold by the company.................

This is just a sample partial case solution. Please place the order on the website to order your own originally done case solution.