Business Cafe - November 2011

The November 2011 edition of Business Cafe - our digital case study magazine for all Business Studies courses - is now available to subscribing schools and colleges. Details of the case studies and a sample download below…

Here is a sample article from a recent edition of Business Cafe. A whole-school subscription to Cafe is just £75 per 12 months and can be ordered here.

Bottle Green

Remember the retro Hollywood film starring Diane Keaton, “Baby Boom”, where Keaton’s character starts making gourmet baby foods from her kitchen in Vermont and the business, backed by some city investor, turns into a multi-million dollar business. If not, don’t worry, or if you are at a very loose end, you might catch it on ITV4! Anyway, the story of “Bottle Green” is not a million miles away from this case.

Cost Cutting an issue at Kellogg’s

In a recession, or economic slowdown, firms tend to scale back on production and this leads to a reduction in the demand for labour. This is what Kellogg’s, the world’s largest cereal manufacturer, decided to do in 2009, when it announced a job cutting exercise involving 1500 staff on a global scale.

Facebook’s “Cool” new Data Centre

There are many reasons that are factored into the strategic decision about where to locate. It is therefore interesting to see that Facebook have decided to locate their first data centre outside of the United States in the small town of Lulea.

Costa Coffee and Loyalty cards

Despite the recession and economic gloom, Costa Coffee is still managing to increase its revenue figures as the coffee culture thrives and grows throughout the UK. Costa attributes part of its success to its loyalty card which gives customers one free coffee for every twenty purchased.

A new lease of life for the Olympic stadium?

The collapse of the sale of the olympic stadium to West Ham United last month and the subsequent decision of the government to lease it out instead, throws some light onto an important but often ignored way of financing a business.

Quantas & the Trade Unions

If you have ever been caught up in an airline industrial dispute, getting to the airport only to find that your flight has been cancelled, then you will appreciate the misery that thousands of Qantas passengers experienced recently.

Tax Evasion and Tax Avoidance

On October 11th BBC news* reported that all but two of the UK’s largest 100 companies have subsidiaries in a tax haven such as The Cayman Islands or Monaco. This may have dismayed some people but it was also reported that ‘the tide might be turning against firms who use them’.