Introduction to Management Science 12th Edition by Bernard Taylor

Exercise 44

Twobucks Coffee Company currently operates 12 coffee shops in downtown Nashville. The company has been losing money and wants to downsize by closing some stores. Its policy has been to saturate the downtown area with stores so that one is virtually always in the sight of a potential or current customer. However, the company's new policy is to have enough stores so that each is within 5 minutes' walking distance of another store. The company would also like to have annual operating costs of no more than $900,000.
The following table shows the coffee shops within 5 minutes' walking distance of another shop and the average annual cost of the existing stores:
Formulate and solve a linear programming model that will select the minimum number of stores the company will need to achieve its new policy objective.