Hatch: Organization Theory, 4th edition

Case Study: Grander Bakery Ltd

On Grander Bakery Ltd’s website it stated that the company had been baking bread since 1852,
but the story goes that Edward Grander’s great-, great-, great-, grandfather had started making
small batches of warm white loaves that he sold through his kitchen window to miners who passed
each day on their way to the pits.

Hungry and tired the men and boys would be spurred on by the doughy aromas pouring from
Grander’s window. Grander even started to customize some of his buns to ensure that each miner
could recognize his own. So Paul Cross’s loaf had a golden cross on the top whilst Tom Brown’s
was made from brown flour. They would laugh and joke and return the next day to see how and
who Grander would ‘take up’ next. The popularity of Grander’s rolls meant that soon enough his
small oven was struggling to cope with the demand.

Before long, the entrepreneurial owner of the pit in the neighboring village approached Grander
with an offer of investment. The pit owner would convert one of his outbuildings into a bakery. He
was excited by the prospects being offered by the advances in machinery and technology and
thought Grander’s buns to be a surefire investment. He also thought it might help boost the morale
of the miners in the wake of the spate of terrible mining disasters.

Grander was excited by the prospect and soon set about working with his investor to establish
Grander Bakery Ltd. The bakery was a success and even when the pits closed this did not harm
the company, instead it served it well. Demand had grown from elsewhere in the country with
Grander loaves being sold throughout the North and miners who had lost their jobs at some of the
collapsed pits were taken on in the bakery.

Today Grander Bakery Ltd still bakes in the same miners’ outbuilding. There have been many
changes, automatic weighing machines, censored ovens, hoppers, and a moving production line
mean that now only one-tenth of the employees are required to make more than 1000 times more
loaves than Grander had overseen in the 1850s. And now Grander bread was sold all over the
country and on the internet. Yet, Grander’s original recipe is still in use and so are his strict
processes of production, particularly when it comes to proving the dough.

But change was on the horizon. Grander Bakery Ltd had just appointed a new CEO after Edward
Grander had been taken ill and retired. The new CEO, Valerie Galetta, had a strong pedigree in
the bread industry, winning numerous awards for her designer delicacies – she had quite a
reputation within the artisan bread community. Valerie had sent an email to all employees make
her ideology for Grander very clear – “people want bread that speaks to them, that reflects the
multi-cultural society that we live in. Now is the time to think small in order to think big!”

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