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Is your supply chain management system really 'app' to the job?

Inventory and problem-spotting as you go, massive time and money savings, and just maybe a restaurant staff mood-improving makeover: These are some of the benefits the right supply chain app can bring to your pizza brand.

January 30, 2019 by Andrew Rosenbloom — Director of Marketing, Consolidated Concepts

As consumers, we order products online all the time.  As restaurateurs, we rely on applications to connect with customers so they can easily browse our menus, order, make requests and pay, all without the hassle of phoning and the inherent potential accessibility issues.  
 
When it comes to placing orders for the restaurant, however, there is a plethora of hoops to jump through. The restaurant industry notoriously lags behind other industries technologically, frequently employing outdated tools like clipboards, phones and even fax machines to orders from distributors.  
 
Until relatively recently, very few alternatives existed aside from face-to-face or fax-to-fax orders with distributor sales reps.  But a new selection of software applications is rapidly changing those standard operating procedures and I recently spoke with the founder of one such app, Brandt Squires of FoodBAM, about how these tools can improve workflow and processes at any manner of restaurant brands.
 
At their core, applications like FoodBAM and MarketMan, Simple Order and Crunchtime, allow restaurants to search and browse distributor catalogs, then route orders directly to their distributor sales representatives. 

"We find that, once operators learn the system, they save approximately six hours per week by ordering through applications," Squires said. 

He explained that the apps allow chefs and managers to easily re-order, price compare and make customizations to match the restaurant's specific storage system needs. 
 
"Beyond time savings, our users also uncover opportunities to save money by taking advantage of pricing options, exploring various pack sizes and even uncovering opportunities to recoup some of their spend in the form of rebates," Squires said. 

"In the past, operators would have needed pencils and calculators to equate one box of chicken breasts to another, but the new generation of ordering applications performs quick pack size conversions to help equate one product to another." 

The profit-making perks in supply chain apps 
 

These ordering apps also give restaurant owners and managers a level of insight previously unavailable to them around their supply chain and usage data. The result is that operators can now compare inventory and supply chain data by category, location and time period. The result is a clear delineation of what the brand spends its money on and why.  

"When all of your invoices are in a stained, greasy stack on a desk, it can be tough to mine those documents for information, but with FoodBAM, price trends, category-level usage data and order histories become a great resource for measuring the overall health of the business," Squires said, using his business's specific app as an example.  
 
The demands of inventory measurement and monitoring are also addressed in the latest revolution in ordering applications. The costly, disruptive and time-consuming task of taking inventory is despised all around the restaurant industry, especially since it also exposes issues like theft, waste and spoilage that must be addressed as well. Supply chain ordering apps greatly ease these issues by integrating inventory into the daily ordering process. 

"By taking inventory every few days, chefs save a ton of time in the long run," Squires said. "The chef is already in the walk-in, so it doesn't take much extra work to take a quick count of what's in stock and put (it) into the app."  

The process also makes any arising issues easier to address nearer to the time they occur, rather than monthly or the quarterly as scheduled inventories occur. Instead, operators and chefs can follow each app's inventory guidelines to identify issues at the source, near the time they emerge.

And finally, one of the latest developments in the world of ordering apps comes in the form of recipe costing.  

"Ordering apps are getting more precise and can now be used to drill into recipe costs," Squires said.  "The software already knows exactly what the restaurant is paying for particular items, so if the recipes are loaded into the system, the software can arrive at a precise cost for each item based on the price of the component products."  

This capability alone represents a major shift for chefs, owners and procurement directors alike. Now these professionals can set prices, develop menus and forecast business more effectively and confidently than ever before.
 
 

About Andrew Rosenbloom

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Andy Rosenbloom is a foodservice professional who heads up the marketing team at the Buyers Edge Platform and its associated GPO brands, including Dining Alliance, Consolidated Concepts, Buyers Edge, FoodBAM and others. Andy’s insights come from a cross-section of the operators, distributors, manufacturers, service providers and trend-watchers.

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