Assume that you are the chief executive officer for a national poultry producer. The company’s operations include hatching chickens through the use of breeder stock and feeding, raising, and processing the mature chicks into finished products. The finished products include breaded chicken nuggets and patties and deboned, skinless, and marinated chicken. The company sells its products to schools, military services, fast-food chains, and grocery stores. In groups of four or five, discuss the following business emphasis and risk issues: 1. In a commodity business like poultry production, what do you think is the dominant business emphasis? What are the implications in this dominant emphasis for how you would run the company? 2. Identify at least two major business risks for operating the company. 3. How could the company try to differentiate its products?

Hit-n-Run Food Trucks, Inc., owns and operates food trucks (mobile kitchens) throughout the west coast. The company’s employees have varying wage levels depending on their experience and length of time with the company. Employees work eight-hour shifts and are assigned to a truck each day based on labor needs to support the daily menu. One of the trucks, Jose O’Brien’s Mobile Fiesta, specializes in Irish-Mexican fusion cuisine. The truck offers a single menu item that changes daily. On November 11, the truck prepared 200 of its most popular item, the Irish Breakfast Enchilada. The following data are available for that day: Quantity of direct labor used 24 hrs. (3 employees, working 8 hour shifts)   Actual rate for direct labor $15.00 per hr. Standard direct labor per meal 0.1 hr. Standard rate for direct labor $15.50 per hr. a. Determine the direct labor rate variance, the direct labor time variance, and the total direct labor cost variance. Enter a favorable variance as…

Whispering’s Market United (WMU) is an umbrella organization for all individuals who are go-getters in home-grown produce, homemade jams/jellies, artisan breads, and other hand-crafted items to be sold on local street corners. It represents a proud group of folks who are trying to keep the small producer and the health-conscious consumer top-of-mind when it comes to filling the refrigerator and pantry.As a large organization that provides a variety of services for its regional member clubs, WMU continually strives to better understand its own profitability. WMU has four key support services to assist its members: Member Services, Social Media, Resource Deployment, and Administrative Services. These four support departments exist for the benefit of the three operating segments, which are organized geographically: East, Central, and West. While the support services primarily assist the operating segments, they also cross over and assist each other. The services offered by the support…

Mary Jones and Jack Smart have joined forces to start M&J Food Products, a processor of packaged shredded lettuce for institutional use. Jack has years of food processing experience, and Mary has extensive commercial food preparation experience. The process will consist of opening crates of lettuce and then sorting, washing, slicing, preserving, and finally packaging the prepared lettuce. Together, with help from vendors, they think they can adequately estimate demand, fixed costs, revenues, and variable cost per 5-pound bag of lettuce. They think a largely manual process will have monthly fixed cost of $50,000 and a variable cost of $2.50 per bag. They expect to sell 75,000 bags of lettuce per month. They expect to sell the shredded lettuce for $3.25 per 5-pound bag. Jack and Mary has been contacted by a vendor to consider a more mechanized process. This new process will have monthly fixed cost of $125,000 per month with a variable cost of $1.75 per bag. Based on the above…

Benson Chicken Corporation processes and packages chicken for grocery stores. It purchases chickens from farmers and processes them into two different products: chicken drumsticks and chicken steak. From a standard batch of 14,000 pounds of raw chicken that costs $7,450, the company produces two parts: 2,500 pounds of drumsticks and 4,500 pounds of breast for a processing cost of $2,466. The chicken breast is further processed into 3,700 pounds of steak for a processing cost of $1,700. The market price of drumsticks per pound is $1.40 and the market price per pound of chicken steak is $3.70. If Benson decided to sell chicken breast instead of chicken steak, the price per pound would be $2.20. Required a-1. Allocate the joint cost to the joint products, drumsticks and breasts, using weight as the allocation base. a-2. Calculate the gross profit for each product. a-3. If the drumsticks are producing a loss, should that product line be eliminated? b-1. Reallocate the joint cost to the…

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The University of Cincinnati Center for Business Analytics is an outreach center that collaborates with industry partners on applied research and continuing education in business analytics. One of the programs offered by the center is a quarterly Business Intelligence Symposium. Each symposium features three speakers on the real-world use of analytics. Each corporate member of the center (there are currently 10) receives five free seats to each symposium. Nonmembers wishing to attend must pay $75 per person. Each attendee receives breakfast, lunch, and free parking. The following are the costs incurred for putting on this event: Rental cost for the auditorium: Registration Processing: Speaker Costs: Continental Breakfast: Lunch: Parking: (a) The Center for Business Analytics is considering a refund policy for no-shows. No refund would be given for members who do not attend, but nonmembers who do not attend will be refunded 50% of the price. Build a spreadsheet model that calculates a…

The Elberta Fruit Farm of Ontario has always hired transient workers to pick its annual cherry crop. Janessa Wright, the farm manager, just received information on a cherry picking machine that is being purchased by many fruit farms. The machine is a motorized device that shakes the cherry tree, causing the cherries to fall onto plastic tarps that funnel the cherries into bins. Ms. Wright has gathered the following information to decide whether a cherry picker would be a profitable investment for the Elberta Fruit Farm: Currently, the farm is paying an average of $200,000 per year to transient workers to pick the cherries. The cherry picker would cost $250,000. It would be depreciated using the straight-line method and it would have no salvage value at the end of its 8-year useful life. Annual out-of-pocket costs associated with the cherry picker would be: cost of an operator and an assistant, $98,000; insurance, $5,000; fuel, $15,000; and a maintenance contract, $20,000. Compute the…