Subject Areas/Case Usage

Strategic Management

This compact case can be used in undergraduate Strategic Management classes to illustrate balancing emotional decision-making with a more analytical approach to starting a new food truck (food trailer) restaurant in an apparently very auspicious situation. It has been tested in senior-level Strategic Management courses.

Brief Synopsis

It was all coming together. Mid-Summer 2011 Burned-N-Turned was looking like a no-fail business to the partners. They had funding, a brief business plan, had developed an attractive menu, and they had found a food trailer for their restaurant. They had also found a very desirable location for the food trailer in Watford City (WC), ND, in the heart of the Bakken oil fields, which for several years had been booming. A visit to the town demonstrated to the partners that there was, indeed, a need for their business, their competitors could not handle the demand from potential restaurant customers and in their “boom mentality” enthusiasm they believed they could not go wrong. Could there have been anything they overlooked in their emotional decision to pursue their business idea?

Download Case