Au Bon Pain Case Study Essay

Business Strategy Au Bon Pain (ABP) is an upscale French Bakery chain restaurant that competes with otherwise fast fare restaurants. They would like to go from a Cycle of Failure to differentiating themselves from their competitors by meliorate their customer take.Alignment Au Bon Pain wanted to differentiate themselves from other fast food chains by increasing the customer experience so that there would be more repeat customers and a uniform income stream. This meant improving relationships with customers which would increase if they had positive experiences and name recognition by staff. ABP had to moderate turnover of staff and increase autonomy at local stores to make believe the experience that they wanted for their customers. They did this by creating the Partner/ handler Program, which created Partner motorcoachs at stores who were more autonomous in the day-to-day decision-making, and in turn, divided in acquire.The architectural plan meant that Partner Managers no w shared in 35% of the profits, Assistants shared in 15% of the profits, which was a significant increase in the punish/ payment structure at the company. By changing the reinforcer structure, PM and Assistant Managers took on more responsibility for their individual store which changed their social function to include things like ordering, staffing, and store aesthetics. During the trial of the Partner/Manager program, the twain stores that volunteered to participate both had managers from different backgrounds who were very driven, independent, and creative. ABP central management hoped that a program like the Partner/Manager Program would help them to upgrade more staff that espoused these characteristics, which they viewed as vital to their success and growth.Application ABP changed the reward structure to increase productivity. This is consistent with the Expectancy Theory in which employees visit in Expectancy (the belief that effort will whiz to results, in this effor t increased compensation), Instrumentality (the belief that a desired outgrowth will come from performance, in this case increased store profits will lead to increased personal compensation), and valence (the outcome, in this caseincreased compensation). The effort of the PM and Assistant Managers increased because their expectation of compensation was directly related to the profits of the store, which meant that the desired outcome of the company and employees were line up and profits increased. The profit-sharing compensation method acting used by ABP is similar to the method that Whole Foods uses.The difference is that ABP only involves the Partner/Manager and Assistant Manager in profit sharing while Whole Foods shares profits with all in all employees through their Gainsharing Program. While at ABP the Partner/Manager Program increases the dedication, productivity, and hopefully decreases turnover of those involved in profit-sharing, it does not do anything for the hourly e mployees who gather in a high turnover rate and are the ones that actually fox the direct customer interaction at the registers, cleaning the stores, and making the food. This could lead to problems for ABP since the hourly employees are directly related to the consumer experience that the ABP is trying to improve, and this program does not address them.ExhibitRoles With the introduction of the Partner-Manager Program, Au Bon Pain looked to interpret the roles of District Manager, create a Partner Manager and Assistant Manager who shared in the profits, and increase autonomy in each store. In the old system, the District Managers micromanaged their stores, but in the new system they were presumption more stores and had to focus on the big.