This is my May interview experience. Since one of the cases hadn't been posted on the forum before, it took me a while to write this up.
Round 1:
Product case — this was similar to what's already on the forum.
Round 2:
They asked about the $300 over-limit transaction case, which has also shown up on the forum before. My attachment has it too.
Round 3:
This was a case I hadn't seen before, and I found it pretty hard on my own. I put the detailed numbers and the answer in the attachment.
Prompt:
Our company is called ValueInc, and we stuff in warehouse. We have a food court open to non-members as well, with hot dogs and other food in there, but hot dogs are the main draw. (Kind of like Costco.)
Now we want to know how much profit we didn't catch:
This part was pretty simple — just calculating profitability.
What are some risks and drawbacks?
What can we do?
The number of customers we need to break even? (There was hidden information you had to ask about here, about the customer base composition.)
If the price of the food increases to $2.5, what should we do?
Now we are thinking of the strategy of making hot dogs ourselves — what factors should we consider? Pros and cons?
Then they gave me a table with some business insights. The most important conclusion was that total revenue from 2010–2024 was gradually increasing, but the share of non-members who only buy hot dogs was also gradually increasing, which is a risk.
What are some strategies we can do here?
If we switch to members only, what are the advantages and disadvantages?
Member spending
Non-member spending
Profit margin for non-combo
Cost of combo
Average spending for multi-purchase members
Non-members' annual revenue
Hot-dog-only non-member visits
Multi-purchase member visits
What's going to be our cost to get rid of the food court?
What are some risks we should be mindful of?
By the end my thinking wasn't very clear anymore, and I needed three hints before I could get the last question.
The last round of the case interview finished at 12pm, and that same afternoon at 1:30 I got a call from HR saying I passed. Hope everyone else's interviews go well too!
Discussion
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