JOHN MOLSON
CASE PUBLICATIONS

W31908

Shreshthi Mehta, Marilyn Anthony

Case (PDF) • 14 pages • 2023-07-07

Intended Audience: Undergraduate/MBA

Summary: 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.

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.

W30025

Raymond L. Paquin, Rania Bou Jaoude, Michel Greiche

Case (PDF) • 8 pages • 2023-06-08

Intended Audience: Intro/Undergraduate

Summary: Over two decades old, Effet Boomerang is an advertising agency based in Quebec, Canada. In recent years, it has found it harder to win client contracts, which has been partially due to changes in the industry. This has left its co-founder and president examining her options for repositioning the agency. This case provides an interesting opportunity to introduce students to internal and external analyses by having them examine how a small firm may leverage its strengths to effectively adapt to a changing industry.

W31040

Dennis Paris, Sheri Lambert, Jennifer Sundstrom-Fitzgerald

Case (PDF) • 16 pages • 2023-03-21

Intended Audience: Undergraduate/MBA

Summary: Ehmke Manufacturing Company, Inc., a technical fabric products company established in 1929 in Philadelphia, United States, was facing challenges attracting and retaining employees. In the first half of 2022, issues such as critical open positions and an exponential number of resignations were being experienced across numerous industries around the globe. On June 1, 2022, the company’s chief executive officer met with his entire management team to discuss his company’s dilemma and various options, including the reputation of the company’s brand. He had to decide how to manage the increasing workforce challenge, despite unprecedentedly high demand for his company’s products and services. His company’s growth projections, from a relatively small company to a medium-size international business, did not account for customer disappointments due to product order delays, especially considering that the company manufactured products used for critical search-and-rescue, military, and other governmental applications in the United States and allied countries. The chief executive officer had three options: accept current conditions, increase wages and benefits, or outsource production.

W27024

Cheryl Gladu

Case (PDF) • 10 pages • 2022-12-13

Intended Audience: Intro/Undergraduate

Summary: In early 2021, Kent Fawcett was a food entrepreneur facing typical questions around scaling his enterprise, Local Pulse. Driven by a personal passion for food as a means to heal both people and the planet, he developed a line of shelf-stable plant-based foods, including breakfast cereals and dehydrated hummus. Since 2018, he had been offering his products online and at the local farmers’ market in Kamloops, British Columbia. He started selling Local Pulse goods wholesale and was beginning to understand the scale at which he would have to produce the goods in order for his business to be financially sustainable. Fawcett was not sure if he was ready to take the financial risk of investing in new facilities to grow the business.

W26996

Raymond L. Paquin, Iryna Sushko, Shannon Lloyd

Case (PDF) • 11 pages • 2022-10-04

Intended Audience: Undergraduate/MBA

Summary: In January 2021, Entomo Farms (Entomo), a family-owned Ontario-based Canadian cricket producer, received additional funding to support its growth and prepare for the entry into Canada of what would be its biggest competitor. As Canada’s largest and only organic cricket supplier, Entomo generated most of its revenue as a supplier of crickets as raw material to food manufacturers; however, due to anticipated industry changes, Entomo was increasing its consumer-level presence by producing and selling more of its own brands as consumer-packaged goods (CPGs). To support this decision, Entomo’s chief operating officer needed to develop a strategic marketing road map for growing the revenues from the company’s CPG segment.

W27037

Shreshthi Mehta, Marilyn Anthony

Case (PDF) • 14 pages • 2022-08-09

Intended Audience: Undergraduate/MBA

Summary: 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?