Maudie’s Tex-Mex (formerly known as Maudie’s Café) is a small chain consisting of a few restaurants in the Austin, Texas area that specializes in diner food and the hybrid cuisine ‘tex-mex.’ It was founded in the 1950s, when Austin was still a small town, and is extremely popular with locals and the occasional tourists. The company capitalizes on this nostalgia by placing its restaurants in neighborhoods with older-leaning demographics, meaning that a sizable percentage of residents in the area have lived in the city long term. The majority of Maudie’s business model focuses on profits from people dining in at the restaurants, however they operate a small take-out and catering service.

Though Maudie’s has been in the area a long time, it is substantially less popular than other long-term Austin restaurants, such as Eddie V’s, which is now a national steakhouse chain, and Chuy’s, another ‘tex-mex’ restaurant and Maudie’s main competitor, which has also been expanded nationally over the last few decades. While Maudie’s is popular among many Austin locals, it is less frequented by younger newcomers to the city, a widely growing demographic fueled by the University of Texas and the growing tech industry. Being unable to break into that market is part of the company’s declining prevalence. Another issue faced by the company is its choice of restaurant locations. Most of their restaurants are in single family style neighborhoods, which tend to have higher property values. Though the restaurants have been in said neighborhoods for a long time, rising rents cut more and more into their profits every year. As the city grows, more restaurants are opened, which subtracts from the number of consumers that seek out Maudie’s and also decreases profits.

The customers are major stakeholders in the company, as they expect the food to reflect the value of the money spent. This means that the managers of Maudie’s must figure out the best way to maximize profits while still securing the ingredients and personnel needed to match the quality of their food with reasonable prices to consumers. Other important stakeholders are the employees, who are needed to keep the business operating. The employees rely on their wages to survive and if they are not paid adequately, they’ll find another place of employment. To please those stakeholders, the company pays them reasonable wages for the market in order to keep the restaurants running efficiently.

Another example of a company that operates in a complex environment due to consumer change and an increased cost of operating a business is Bed Bath & Beyond, a major home goods retailer that recently filed for bankruptcy and moved its business completely online. The only way for the company to maximize its profits was to make the switch away from physical store locations, which cut out the need for rent and decreased the number of employees, which greatly decreased the operating cost.