Sustainability Indicators Monitoring System for Pie Face Bakery Cafe
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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1. Introduction
Pie Face Bakery Cafe, an Australia mega chain, is established in 2003 and now it is the most popular bakery cafe chain in Australia. Pie face is specializing in pies, biscuits, sandwiches, and coffee and alike, which makes the coffeehouse an integrated and gourmet bakery cafe. Introduced in a franchising partnership program in 2009, now Pie Face has becoming one of the fastest expanding franchises in Austria. For a better development and business expansion, Pie Face needs to apply a sustainable monitoring system to better help its future development. A good indicator monitoring system can serve as a sign for stakeholders to know the current status of Pie Face, what is the strength and weakness of the business, where it can be improved and how it can be improved. The purpose of this report is to provide effective and useful measurements and guidance to support the implementation and application of sustainability indicator monitoring system in Pie Face.
In accordance with these objectives and targets, this report is divided into three parts. The first section is an introduction of Pie Face: the business overview and the main operations of the business; the second section is a detail description of the sustainability indicators monitoring system: economic sustainability, social sustainability, environmental sustainability, operational sustainability and strategic sustainability as well as the reason why Pie Face needs a monitoring system; the third section is a specific monitoring system designed for Pie Face. And finally, the conclusion of the whole article finishes the whole article.  
 
2. Introduction of Pie Face Bakery Cafe
2.1 Pie Face-The Business
Pie Face Bakery Cafe, an Australia mega chain, is established in 2003 and now it is the most popular bakery cafe chain in Australia. Pie face is specializing in pies, biscuits, sandwiches, and coffee and alike, which makes the coffeehouse an integrated and gourmet bakery cafe. The special part about pies in Pie Face which makes it iconic is that every pie is drawn with a little smiley face on it. Pie Face is boasting of and wins affection by its fresh and natural ingredients, crisp crust and local beef. Introduced in a franchising partnership program in 2009, now Pie Face has becoming one of the fastest expanding franchises in Austria. With great success, Pie Face is aiming at becoming a landmark and innovative brand in Australian food and beverage service industry (Pie Face Pty Ltd Case Study, 2010).
 
2.2 Pie Face Main Operations
Despite its delicious and savoury food and coffee, Pie Face also enjoys the reputation of high quality and strong brand, which gives the franchisees more opportunity to join the brand. First of all, Pie Face is welcomed to all ages, different backgrounds and various stakeholders. Secondly, Pie Face offers convenience to customers, which means clients can take away the food or coffee within a minute. Good products and good services bring in good profits, especially in food and beverage industry, bakery foods is known for high gross margins. Moreover, Pie Face offers its franchisees central kitchen where all the food is made. This way each store is in no need of kitchen staff which cost each store less overheads. Also Pie Face is helping the franchisees to find the most flexible location in local area plus the help of all the operation process instructions. For the management part, Pie Face contributes to the franchisees with support of management teams, professional training groups and marketing professionals in order to help franchisees to run business in a smooth and steady way. To further guarantee the benefits of the franchisees, Pie Face also launches Profit Protection Program to ensure the franchisees achieve $ 80,000 to $ 120, 000 profits at the first year. This program becomes an attraction for franchisees when they consider investing in business.
 
When driven by fast expanding and steady development, a sustainability indicator monitoring system is in great need for Pie Face. In the following section, a detail description of sustainability indicator monitoring system will be introduced as well as the reason why the sustainability indicator monitoring system is important for the future development of Pie Face.
 
3. Sustainability indicators
3.1 What is sustainable development?
As discussed by Williams (2000), sustainable development refers to the conduction of development meets the needs of current expanding without compromising the ability to realize the future development. Generally speaking, the definition of sustainable development contains two dimensions, that is, the matter of development and the concept of sustainability. Development means expanding in a better manner and sustainability stands for the status of maintenance, i.e. remains the peak of the development in a balance way. In terms of balance, sustainable development refers to the incorporation of social sustainability, economic sustainability and environmental sustainability (Goodland & Daly, 1996). Moreover, sustainable development of enterprises contains more elements which will be explained in the following section.
 
3.2 Indicators of sustainability for enterprises
As mentioned above, sustainable development refers to the incorporation of social sustainability, economic sustainability and environmental sustainability (Goodland & Daly, 1996). However, when it comes to the sustainability of enterprises, the sustainable development contains more elements.
 
According to Kirkwood (2012), most sustainability indicators for enterprises can be summarized as followed:
Ÿ   Economic sustainability: An enterprise is able to survive and expand through management of operational costs, and is able to response and feed back to the future events. Economic sustainability indicates that an enterprise obtains the ability to plan and provide prudent financial performance (Mollet, Arx &Ilic, 2012) and to use the risk management systems to make sure the continued profitable operations. In addition, a sustainable enterprise is also prudent in finance towards its stakeholders, the customers, the employees and the communities which it serves and operates for.
Ÿ   Social sustainability: The enterprise should make sure that all the stakeholders have the opportunities to fully participate in the activities, decision-making process (Developing a successful governance strategy, 2005). Social sustainability of enterprise presents the philosophy that enterprise should value the natural resources and productivity in order to meet the stakeholders’ satisfaction and improve their enjoyment. In social sustainability, what really matters is the effective employment and financial performance that is measured in the light of social contacts and social encounters instead of consumer consumption.
Ÿ   Environmental sustainability: A sustainable environmental development of enterprises means that the enterprise has the ability to operate and perform its services without any negative impact to the environment. Environmental performance requires the enterprise uses non-polluting energy and natural resources throughout its operations. Moreover, a process and system of economically efficient, environmentally friendly and healthful operations for its stakeholders, customers, employees and communities is also demanded. The implementation of pollution prevention actions by using the recycled and toxic free materials is also a good practice for enterprise to undertake environmental sustainability.
Ÿ   Operational sustainability: Operational sustainability indicates the incorporation of business performance in terms of efficiencies and effectiveness. These two features assure the enterprise remains effective in structure and profitable in performance, which further influences the objectives of the enterprise. A sustainable operation guarantees the continuous improvement of enterprise by offering the monitoring system and measurable feedbacks. In addition, the sustainable operation includes internal and external effective communications as well as harmony balance between enterprises’ operations and the benefits of stakeholders, customers, employees and communities (Sisco & Wong, 2008).
Ÿ   Strategic sustainability: Strategic and sustainable activities means to adopt some measurement and strategies to meet the demand of current business meanwhile to enhance other need that is necessary for the future development. Strategic sustainability also means that the enterprise has the ability to select and concentrate on products for the future groups of customers. By achieving this targets, enterprises also needs to provide strategies to help stakeholders with quicker decision making process and provide more cost-effective services. Last but not the least, strategic sustainability means the enterprise should hire a group of management who understands the values and corporate principles and is able to provide constructive and inspiring visions and conducts step by step missions as a way to showing proper leadership.
 
3.3. Why does Pie Face need Sustainability indicators monitoring system?
For an enterprise, to implement a sustainable development program, the enterprise should first understand the principles and values of indicators (Fiskel, McDaniel & Mendenhall, 1999). Generally speaking, indicators of enterprise sustainability are presented in the form of quantitative and qualitative measures of key features of the development system which is related to the future development and vitality of enterprises’ expanding (Miller, 2007). In application of the sustainability indicators to Pie Face, the approach should be instrumental, that is to say, Pie Face needs to incorporates stakeholders, consumers, employees and communities to the decision making process. A good indicator monitoring system can serve as a sign for stakeholders to know the current status of Pie Face, what is the strength and weakness of the business, where it can be improved and how it can be improved. In addition, Pie Face is also able to draw out the future plan for business expansion according to the indicators. The goal of developing a sustainable indicator monitoring system for Pie Face is to make it possible for Pie Face to achieve different goals and objectives.
 
4. A Sustainability Indicator Monitoring System for Pie Face
4.1 Application overview and business phase status
As a practical guide to apply sustainability indicator monitoring system for a certain business, in this section, Pie Face, a set of indicators will be presented and different phases of business development will be exampled. Most importantly, a time-scale designed for Pie Face is presented in the following section to offer readers a clear time-line for Pie Face to realize the sustainability.
 
According to Lueneburger & Goleman (as cited in Sloan, Klingenberg & Rider, 2013), there are three phases for business to initiate sustainability: the first phase is for business enterprise to create and produce the sustainability vision, the second phase is to makes the vision into real practice and the third phase is emphasising on meeting the future needs of development and business expansion. Based on the previous analysis of Pie Face operation, it is not hard to find that Pie Face is experiencing Phase Two and on the transition of Phase Three. That is to say, Pie Face is now making its vision of sustainable development transfer into real practice, such as opens more franchise chain stores domestically and internationally. The approach of Pie Face introducing the Profit Protection Program shows that Pie Face is putting its focus on the future development. Generally speaking, Pie Face is presenting the form of quantitative and qualitative measures of key features of the development system which is related to the future development and vitality of enterprises’ expanding.
 
4.2 Time-scale for Pie Face to implement sustainability indicators system
It is relatively easy to identify the different phases that Pie Face is going through, while it is quite difficult to design and draw out a clear and reasonable time-line for Pie Face to realize the sustainable development in a smooth manner (Bossel, 1999). The time scale of sustainability indicator monitoring system is usually short, because the indicators is quickly showing the states and matters of the system, where people can quickly know the consequences (Klauer & Baumgärtner, 1998). As mentioned above, Pie Face is experiencing the transaction from Phase Two to Phase Three. Therefore, the time-line can be setting as the first period is for the stabilization of Phase Two, then the second period is the transaction from Phase Two to Phase Three, then the last period is the development and improvement of Phase Three.
 
4.3 Monitoring System Indicators for Pie Face
In application of the sustainability indicators to Pie Face, the approach should be instrumental, that is to say, Pie Face needs to incorporates stakeholders, consumers, employees and communities to the decision making process. A good indicator monitoring system can serve as a sign for stakeholders to know the current status of Pie Face, what is the strength and weakness of the business, where it can be improved and how it can be improved. In addition, Pie Face is also able to draw out the future plan for business expansion according to the indicators. The goal of developing a sustainable indicator monitoring system for Pie Face is to make it possible for Pie Face to achieve different goals and objectives.
 
This monitoring system indicators chart is designed according to the sustainability indicators theories mentioned above:
 

Indicators Category	Indicator examples	Mean-based outcome (score: 1-10)	Effective-based outcome (score: 1-10)
Economic indicators	Profitability
	Incomes
	Investment
	Human resources
	Cost control
	Financial balance
Social indicators	Local employment
	Public safety
	Charity program
	Care Day
Environmental indicators	Air & water quality
	Recycle participation
	Garbage emission
	Pollution free material usage
Operational indicators	Day to day business
	Employment consideration
	Other management practice (Ecker, et al, 2012)
Strategic indicators	Promotion plan
	Management training
	Vision & mission implementation

This sustainability indicator monitoring system is based on the five elements of sustainable development indicators. The diagram explicit the five elements by presenting different indicator examples and supported with score-based outcome evaluation, which give readers more clear idea about how to evaluate and assess the monitoring system. As it is listed in the chart, two different types of evaluation monitoring indicators are presented, that is, Mean-based outcome and effective-based outcome. This way, Pie Face can have different aspects to see and observe the results of the practice while they can know that is it the problem with the implementation or is it the problem with the consequence.
 
5. Conclusion
This paper is written and composed to achieve the best and the most possible sustainability of economic profits and outcomes for Pie Face business, the environmental and the social sectors and all the customers of Pie Face. This includes all operational process, products and activities that are connected to Pie Face. A good sustainability indicator monitoring system should includes the following features such as being specific to some certain business; indicators being measurable and open in a quantitative way; and being sensitive and reliable of data (Olsson et al, 2004). This report is written in the following order: a detail description of Pie Face and operational management; an evaluation of Pie Face to identify which phase the business is at; an evaluation of Pie Face to estimate which phase it can be upgraded to; and a monitoring system for Pie Face. The sustainability indicator adopted in this paper is designed for Pie Face to define its operational problems, set its management goals, measure its progress and evaluate its performance, etc. In particular, this sustainability monitoring system initiates to coordinate among stakeholders (Fiksel, Eason & Frederickson, 2012). Hopefully, this paper of sustainability indicator monitoring system can provide a starting point for Pie Face and business alike to help them move forwards with the implementation of monitoring system. However, the effectiveness and feasibility of the sustainability monitoring system for Pie Face has not yet proven. This leaves the opportunity to improve the indicators for future researches and offers the chance to discuss the potential possibilities of proper time-line development.

Reference:
 
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