case library / m&a and investment decisions
Chai Social × Roast Collective
A medium m&a and investment decisions case, candidate-led, built for live practice with an AI interviewer that grades like a coach.
- Ma cannibalization
- candidate-led
- medium
- ~30 min
- 1 exhibit
Our client is Chai Social, a fast-growing chain of spiced-tea and snack cafés with about 300 corporate-owned locations concentrated in dense urban neighborhoods. Chai Social is considering acquiring Roast Collective, a specialty coffee chain of similar size whose stores are frequently on the same blocks or in the same shopping strips as Chai Social's own locations. Management wants to know whether this acquisition makes sense. How would you advise them?
What happens when you run it live
Your interviewer holds answers to 5 clarifying questions candidates usually ask, so opening the case correctly gets rewarded. The case unfolds over 6 phases, with 1 exhibit handed to you at the right moments. You structure, do the math out loud, and close with a recommendation. Then you get a graded report across structure, quant, insight, synthesis, and communication, with the specific moments that cost you points. The exhibits, numbers, and answer key stay inside the live session, the way a real interviewer keeps the case packet on their side of the table.
How to approach a m&a and investment decisions case
Acquisition and investment cases ask whether a deal or a capital project is worth doing. The spine is almost always standalone value, plus synergies or incremental cash flows, versus price and risk. Interviewers expect you to separate the value of the asset as it is from the value the buyer adds.
Bring the finance instincts: payback period, break-even, simple NPV logic, and cannibalization when the new thing eats the old thing's revenue. Strong candidates also name the deal-breaker risks (integration, regulation, construction lag, financing) and end with a clear go or no-go with conditions.
Run Chai Social × Roast Collective live, free. About 30 minutes, graded in the same sitting.
Start practicing freefree · no card · graded in minutes