If you build it...

On the 28th of April 2o1o, the Officers' Mess Committee approved a proposal to take over the dilapidated and run down bottle shop facility. In all fairness it wasn't the bottle shop that was dilapidated or run down, but just the stock and the interest.

Without knowing the specifics of the history of bottle shop, I know that the management of it was contracted out. This not only included staffing it, but buying the stock and pricing it. It is difficult to expect a commercial entity to put its capital into Wine on the shelf with limited expectation of a return on investment. Thus begins a downward spiral (invest less money, offer worse deals, nobody comes etc etc)

In many ways it makes sense that the Committee owns the stock. The capital that they have belongs to the Members, the wines bought with it represents a provision of a service to those Members and if profit is only an enabling motive then the Committee makes different decision about investment. This is not a pure ROI problem...

The primary goal of the Committee is to service its Member's needs, a measure of success is the membership ratio (number of Members/number of potential Members). Profit simply acts as an enabler to this effect. Probably not worth pointing out that Lean and Six Sigma doesn't work here...

The Committee agreed to the proposal to relieve the Contractor of their contractual obligation to stock the bottle shop, and this was a mutually beneficial situation due to the unanticipated incentives discussed. The approved budget was $8000 to stock the bottle shop, now the challenging bit began