Business Case Study Analysis – Frank’s
All-American BarBeQue
Overview
Robert Rainsford is a twenty-eight-year-old facing a major turning point in his life. He has
found himself unemployed for the first time since he was fifteen years old. Robert holds a BS
degree in marketing from the University of Rhode Island. After graduation, a firm that
specialized in developing web presences for other companies hired him. He worked for that
firm for the last seven years in New York City. Robert rose rapidly through the company’s
ranks, eventually becoming one of the firm’s vice presidents. Unfortunately, during the last
recession, the firm suffered significant losses and engaged in extensive downsizing, so Robert
lost his job. He spent months looking for a comparable position, yet even with an excellent
résumé, nothing seemed to be on the horizon. Not wanting to exhaust his savings and finding
it impossible to maintain a low-cost residence in New York City, he returned to his hometown
in Fairfield, Connecticut, a suburban community not too far from the New York state border.
He found a small apartment near his parents. As a stopgap measure, he went back to work
with his father, who is the owner of a restaurant—Frank’s All-American BarBeQue. His father,
Frank, started the restaurant in 1972. It is a midsize restaurant—with about eighty seats—
that Frank has built up into a relatively successful and locally well-known enterprise. The
restaurant has been at its present location since the early 1980s. It shares a parking lot with
several other stores in the small mall where it is located. The restaurant places an emphasis
on featuring the food and had a highly simplified décor, where tables are covered with
butcher paper rather than linen tablecloths. Robert’s father has won many awards at regional
and national barbecue cook-offs, which is unusual for a business in New England. He has won
for both his barbecue food and his sauces. The restaurant has been repeatedly written up in
the local and New York papers for the quality of its food and the four special Frank’s AllAmerican
BarBeQue sauces. The four sauces correspond to America’s four styles of
barbecue—Texan, Memphis, Kansas City, and Carolina. In the last few years, Frank had sold
small lots of these sauces in the local supermarket.
As a teenager, Robert, along with his older sister Susan, worked in his father’s restaurant.
During summer vacations while attending college, he continued to work in the restaurant.
Robert had never anticipated working full-time in the family business, even though he knew
his father had hoped that he would do so. By the time he returned to his hometown, his
father had accepted that neither Robert nor Susan would be interested in taking over the
family business. In fact, Frank had started to think about selling the business and retiring.
However, Robert concluded that his situation called for what he saw as desperate measures.
Initially, Robert thought his employment at his father’s business was a temporary measure
while he continued his job search. Interestingly, within the first few weeks he returned to the
business, he felt that he could bring his expertise in marketing—particularly his web
marketing focus—to his father’s business. Robert became very enthusiastic about the
possibility of fully participating in the family business. He thought about either expanding the
size of the restaurant, adding a takeout option, or creating other locations outside his
hometown. Robert looked at the possibility of securing a much larger site within his
hometown to expand the restaurant’s operations. He began to scout surrounding
communities for possible locations. He also began to map out a program to effectively use
the web to market Frank’s All-American BarBeQue sauce and, in fact, to build it up to a whole
new level of operational sophistication in marketing.
Robert recognized that the restaurant was as much of a child to his father as he and his
sister were. He knew that if he were to approach his father with his ideas concerning
expanding Frank’s All-American BarBeQue, he would have to think very carefully about the
options and proposals he would present to his father. Frank’s All-American BarBeQue was
one of many restaurants in Fairfield, but it is the only one that specializes in barbecue. Given
the turnover in restaurants, it was amazing that Frank had been able to not only survive but
also prosper. Robert recognized that his father was obviously doing something right. As a
teenager, he would always hear his father saying the restaurant’s success was based on
“giving people great simple food at a reasonable price in a place where they feel
comfortable.” He wanted to make sure that the proposals he would present to his father
would not destroy Frank’s recipe for success.
Question 8: In the Appendix (Chapter 16 “Appendix: A Sample Business Plan”), you will find
the income statements and balance sheets for Frank’s All-American BarBeQue for the years
2006 to 2010. Compute some of the key financial ratios for this business and discuss the
meanings of any trends.
Question 9: Locate the average values of these values for the restaurant industry and
comment on how well or poorly Frank’s All-American BarBeQue appears to be doing with
respect to the industry.
Question 10: Frank’s business plan in the Appendix (Chapter 16 “Appendix: A Sample
Business Plan”) provides projected income statements and balance sheets for a five-year
forecast horizon. Compute the same ratios as in Exercise 1 and comment on your results.
Marking
