Dear Community,
I have a question regarding the "McKinsey Case: Digital & Vegan Restaurant Franchise" from the library. I had to come up with a structure for this case in a Preplounge meeting yesterday. The structure I used was similar to the one in the solutions, however I divided it into internal and external like this: internal: Prices, Food & beverages provided, It system efficiency & maintenance, Marketing, Franchising (can we find good franchisees for our business ect.) and external: Customer (Disposable Income, Customer Confidence, Trends), Competition, Regulations (about wages and taxes). I got the feedback from the person I cased with that she is unsure whether this framework is MECE. She pointed out that f.ex. Price could be depended on the Market and Competition so she is unsure whether it is correct to put it into the internal bucket if the other topics are under external. Same for Marketing. Am I wrong? Should I have not used the internal/ external structure? In the solutions there are just 5 different points listed but I just wanted to separate it to make it easier for me to think about it instead of just randomly listing 5 points... How should I have structured it to make it actually MECE?
Thank you!
Thank you for your answer. However the specific question was: What do you think are key factors which would influence how VegDigi will perform economically in the next 5 years? Would you still use your suggested framework? I believe the question is more about VegDigi itself and not about the VC incl synergies ect?
Thanks for clarifying. I started from the prompt of the case you mentioned: "Our client has engaged us to help them to determine whether or not to make an investment into the VegDigi". The suggestion above is indeed the structure I would use for the whole case :)
Just FYI, the "What do you think are key factors which would influence how VegDigi will perform economically in the next 5 years?" should be treated as an additional qualitative question that comes after you have structured the whole case (and should not substitute the structure to answer the case prompt, which is your client's mandate!). Not sure if your peer interviewer followed this path or not, but this is what every MBB interviewer would do.
If we treat this as a *second, short and qualitative question*, I think your structure is still "OK, but improvable". Internal and External can be used in this context; however, the MECE point about market-related elements in a few different buckets or sub-buckets remains, and there are so many elements that you might be boiling the ocean. Personally, I would have chosen clear categories as
- Product and Price Mix: I want to understand what kind of product offering we expect to have in the future, whether the average ticket is sustainable in terms of demand, and whether our offering can sustain a profitable cost-structure
- Footprint and Customer Growth (or 'Scale'): this is a business that needs economies of scale to be profitable, so I want to see how many stores we can open, if we can increase customers per store, and how good the economics of the franchising expansion are
- Competition: I want to understand whether we have a sustained competitive advantage over our competitors and whether we can build barriers to entry
Since the question mentioned "key factors" and "economically", I chose focus over quantity. E.g., Is regulation important? Probably not a top-3 concern in this space (where you have to respect basic food safety rules, but you do not have to get approval from Antitrust to open a new shop or product line).