Sabra Stop: A Venture in Vending
An economic viability analysis for Sabra Hummus, one of the world’s largest hummus suppliers, to innovate the market by launching a line of hummus vending machines.
This was my last coursework done at Imperial College London, completed with the legend of an excel warrior that is Joe Johnson and everyone’s favourite: Sunny.
The coursework in Michel Cardin’s Economics and Finance for Systems Design is a fun one. You are tasked with defining a “system” and making a proposal for a new project of sorts: a product, a new supply chain, manipulating where goods are manufactured, etc. Our first thought was to open a fresh hummus shop on Imperial College’s South Kensington campus, however, when it came to some of the financial analysis and flexibility modeling that was required, a restaurant didn’t quite meet the criteria. From there, we pivoted to the world’s first hummus vending machine and made the proposal for Sabra – one of the largest hummus producers for the North American market.
*The images above were generated using AI and are not related to the Sabra brand in any capacity, except for inspiration and creative design to better convey the concept.
Fresh Hummus and pita for all…
After market research and much analysis we were able to make final recommendations regarding Sabra’s vending machine venture:
ABSTRACT
This report presents a thorough financial analysis and makes a case for Sabra Dipping Company LLC (Sabra), co-owned by the Israeli Strauss Group and Pepsi-co, to launch a line of hummus vending machines in the US. From our findings, we recommend Sabra manufactures these machines in China, relies on existing sales teams for the marketing and business undertakings, stocks hummus from their facility in Virginia, and elects for the less expensive, frozen pita to accompany each meal, which will be heated to order. Further, Sabra should build flexibility into the project in regards to uncertainty sur- rounding ingredient pricing. These strategies result in a mean NPV of $1,773,254.66 USD: a profitable return on investment over the 20 year study period.
