Question 1 – What is Zingerman’s mission and what kind of challenges does it pose?
The formalized mission was all about sharing an intimate experience: “share the Zingemann’s experience”, in a sense of providing a service that makes the customers smile with a food that makes them happy.
The reason why employees wanted to share the Zingerman’s experience was “To enrich as many lives as |they| possibly |could|. And the way they would go about sharing the Zingerman’s Experience was by “showing love and caring in all |their| actions.”
Out of Zingerman’s mission and vision, a commitment, in a form of a triangle, took shape:1) great food, 2) great service, and 3) great finance. But there were also several challenges…
Employees must view themselves as unique stakeholders for providing such memorable and successful experience - “Providing high-quality food and exceptional service viewed as ends unto themselves”, and on the other hand, employees did have to share Ari and Paul’s business principles and values in order to pass on such passion on the customer experience. Thus, recruitment policies had the purpose of attracting the right employees that would in fact believe in such vision, mission and guiding principles.
It was also crucial that the leadership philosophy that Ari and Paul truly believed in was shared by all the collaborators.
Hence, this was also a challenge: passing a mindset of values and principles onto Zingerman's managers. On the other hand, due to the expected growth of different businesses it will also be a challenge to maintain the Zingerman's culture as a main structural aspect of the organization.
Question 2 – What is Zingerman’s strategy and what kind of systems are in place to support it? < ...