Taking on the Olympics in Beijing

The Havi team, based in Beijing, spent the month developing a marketing program for Havi Foods to capitalize on Havi’s work as the sole logistics provider for McDonalds and Aramark. Both companies deliver all the food to be consumed during the summer Olympics staged in Beijing in August. Tal Rosen, Marnie Banting and RJ Caldwell presented a marketing strategy to Havi Foods CEO Bill O’Biren and Marketing Director, Patrick Lin on June 19 based on their work over the past month (pic at right)

Havi Foods is the sole distribution arm for McDonalds in China – delivering frozen, cold and ambient temperature products to McDonald’s stores throughout China. Aramark is a foodservice company who was given the rights to supply food to Olympic participants and spectators along with McDonalds for the 2008 Olympic games. Havi’s job will be to deliver that food in a timely fashion from their distribution centers to all Olympic sites and venues, a challenging job when you consider the heat and humidity in Beijing in August and the need for many items to be delivered either frozen or cold. Havi will deliver over 70,000 meals per day over the course of the Olympic games. The Miami MBA team developed a marketing strategy for Havi Foods to use their Olympic experience as a way to open up future business opportunities with other food companies after the Olympic games. The student’s strategies and approaches were well received by Havi management and will be implemented once the games are over.

The MBA team enjoyed the opportunity to experience the challenges of such a huge food supply operation, particularly the role of the Chinese government in setting up regulations on how work was to be done. Extensive security has been implemented at all Havi sites, and a new bar code system was just put into place to ensure the proper tracking of all products being sent to the Olympic venues (a very challenging requirement since it was just established this week, and new bar codes labels must now be created for all products. Havi will have a major challenge as the Olympic games open since they will still be operating the entire supply chain operations for the McDonalds chain throughout China.

In addition to a challenging project, there was also the challenge of living and breathing in Beijing for over a month. These pics give an idea of the air quality.