Publications

May 2013
Case

Launching Krispy Natural: Cracking the Product Management Code

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Heather Beckham

Pemberton Products is a U.S. market leader in the cookie and bakery snacks segment of the sweet snack market. Looking to expand into the salty snack market, the company acquires Krispy Inc., a maker of salty snack crackers located in the southeastern U.S. To compete... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Competition; Organizational Culture; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Expansion; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Acquisition; Food and Beverage Industry; Ohio; United States

June 2018 (Revised October 2020)
Case

Global Brand Management of Anheuser Busch InBev's Budweiser

By: Jill Avery

Brian Perkins, chief architect of the $6 billion Budweiser brand, was excited about 2018, in which the company would launch Budweiser into several new markets in Africa and Latin America. He was feeling the pressure to finalize a global brand strategy that would define... View Details

January 2021
Case

Bespoken Spirits: Disrupting Distilling

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

On October 7, 2020, Bespoken Spirits publicly announced it had received $2.6 million of seed funding for its “sustainable maturation process,” a process that could produce award-winning whiskeys in just days rather than years using a novel technology and data science. ... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Disruption; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Cash Flow; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Brands and Branding; Business Model; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Service Industry; United States; California

April 2002 (Revised May 2003)
Case

Nghe An Tate & Lyle Sugar Company (Vietnam)

By: Benjamin C. Esty, Frank J. Lysy and Carrie Ferman

In September 1998, Paul Cooper, Tate & Lyle's finance director for international investments, asked the International Finance Corp. (IFC) to consider lending up to $45 million to finance a $90 million sugar mill in northern Vietnam. Ewen Cobban, an IFC agricultural... View Details

Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Food and Beverage Industry; Viet Nam

February 2022
Case

Toraya

By: Lauren Cohen and Akiko Kanno

Mitsuharu Kurokawa was the 18th generation leader of a family firm that produced and sold premium Japanese sweets, Toraya Confectionery Co., Ltd. He had succeeded the business from his father, Mitsuhiro Kurokawa who had led the firm for thirty years. Mitsuharu was... View Details

Keywords: Branding; Luxury Brand; Succession; Family Business; Management Succession; Brands and Branding; Luxury; Marketing; Expansion; Globalization; Innovation and Invention; Customer Satisfaction; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Japan

2023
Article

Association Between Regulatory Submission Characteristics and Recalls of Medical Devices Receiving 510(k) Clearance

By: Alexander O. Everhart, Soumya Sen, Ariel D. Stern, Yi Zhu and Pinar Karaca-Mandic

Importance: Most regulated medical devices enter the U.S. market via the 510(k) regulatory submission pathway, wherein manufacturers demonstrate that applicant devices are “substantially equivalent” to 1 or more “predicate” devices (legally marketed medical devices... View Details

Keywords: Recalls; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

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September 2013 (Revised August 2015)
Background Note

Leadership and Teaming

By: Ethan Bernstein

Small differences in the leadership of teams can have large consequences for the success of their efforts. Many initiatives fail not because of a fatal error in judgment or insufficient ideas, knowledge, motivation, or capabilities to deliver a solution. They fail... View Details

10 May 2020
Blog Post

Let’s Hear it For the Moms – The Incredible Balancing Act of Student Mothers

insurance industry Proudest Accomplishment: Being the mother of Elisa and the wife of Andrés Summer Internship: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) - Boston Office How do you do it? I have a great partner (Andy), I’m positive and enjoy the... View Details

01 Jun 2020
News

Meal Plan

Image by John Ritter In 2019, US restaurants topped $860 billion in revenues; prior to COVID-19, Americans spent more for food away from home than food purchased for at-home consumption, whether it be a... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; restaurants; COVID-19; pandemic; recovery; Food Services and Drinking Places; Food Services and Drinking Places; Food Services and Drinking Places; Food Services and Drinking Places

01 Mar 2004
News

Ron Shaich’s Café Society

sandwiches on its own bread. We spent the next two years traveling the country attempting to understand the changes occurring in our industry and concluded that, like so many others, the food View Details

Keywords: Susan Young; Food Services and Drinking Places; Food Services and Drinking Places

03 Aug 2022
News

Hungry for Change

products in the food industry are thinking, ‘How can we make the best product possible within the existing grocery supply chain?” she says. Flynn decided to launch Sun & Swell with a different approach:... View Details

Keywords: April White

15 Mar 2024
News

Hungry for Change

particularly proud. The ultimate goal is to build a circular food system, in which you buy a good-for-you snack in a compostable bag and that bag turns back into rich soil to grow more food. “We hope to move the entire View Details

01 Oct 2002
News

What's Cookin'

in part, perhaps, to its tough, unglamorous realities. “Anyone who does a good job in the food industry and makes money works really, really hard,” says Keith Garner, owner of Pasta Cuisine, a restaurant and... View Details

Keywords: Hanna, Julia

03 Mar 2020
News

Can This Man Change the American Diet?

the food dev lab is part of Clover’s DNA. “We will screw something up,” Muir wrote on the wall of Clover’s first restaurant in Harvard Square. Customers can read about those missteps in the “our mistakes” section of Clover’s website. For... View Details

Keywords: Agriculture

January 2016
Case

Haiti Hope: Innovating the Mango Value Chain

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey

This case study examines a market-based approach to economic development through the eyes of NGO TechnoServe's project manager, implementing a US$9.5 million five-year public-private partnership between Coca-Cola, IDB, and USAID. The case ends at the beginning of the... View Details

October 2003 (Revised January 2004)
Case

BSE in Canada

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Kevin Allison

A cow was determined to have Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in Canada, which closed its beef exports to the United States and 39 other countries. What future action should be taken, and how will country of origin specification and traceability take place in the... View Details

Keywords: Animal-Based Agribusiness; Trade; Food; Globalized Markets and Industries; Health; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Canada

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01 Dec 2014
News

Forecasting ’15

the scenes for a while. Almost everyone I know in the food packaging and grocery industry is a health nut. People are becoming more aware of their health and have a growing desire to find a way to eat and... View Details

Keywords: Food Services and Drinking Places; Food Services and Drinking Places; Food Services and Drinking Places; Food Services and Drinking Places

November 2011
Article

KFC's Radical Approach to China

By: David E. Bell and Mary L. Shelman

Global companies face a crucial question when they enter emerging markets: how far should they go to localize their offerings? Typically they try to sell core products or services pretty much as they've been sold in Europe or the United States, with headquarters... View Details

Keywords: Food; Food and Beverage Industry; China

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