The food service industry is witnessing a major disruption caused by the outbreak of COVID-19. Diners have become quite hygiene conscious and prefer to order food online over visiting restaurants.
A recent trend that has gained traction is that of Ghost kitchens or Cloud kitchens. It’s a delivery-only restaurant where there is no concept of dining space.
According to Euromonitor, ghost kitchens could create a $1 trillion global market by 2030. Hence, implementing a modern day supply chain management software is the need of the hour as the food service industry needs to connect the various elements in supply chain and ensure timely delivery. Here are 9 key advantages of Supply Chain Management Software:
Effective procurement
Providing best quality food to the customers is of prime concern to any food service establishment. With the help of cloud based SCM platforms such as inresto SCM, you can manage procurement effortlessly. The system provides smart insights to take timely decisions regarding the vendors who can provide quality materials at better rates.
Centralised fulfilment
If you are a restaurateur running multiple outlets, preparing food at multiple kitchens adds on to the expenses. The platform help you in fulfilling all your requirements from the central kitchen that leads to enormous cost savings. It’s from the central kitchen that purchase orders are sent to the relevant vendors.
Real-time visibility
For those restaurants engaged in providing food delivery at customer’s doorsteps, SCM software adds more visibility to the delivery operations. It helps track the real-time status of the food trucks and aids in better co-ordination with truck drivers and delivery staff.
Analysing driver performance
Delay in food delivery can be caused to various reasons such as inefficiency of drivers, incorrect routing etc. Automated SCM platforms help you compare the performance of drivers and take necessary corrective actions.
Cut down overall grocery cost
Wastage of kitchen resources poses a major challenge for restaurants. It’s not a cause of concern anymore, as the application enables optimum use of kitchen resources. It also leads to a significant reduction in overall grocery cost and requirement. Pilferage can also be cut down to a major extent.
No more disgruntled customers
Running out of food materials and handling the dissatisfied customers is a common problem faced by restaurants. Inresto provides you timely alerts on minimum threshold quantities pertaining to all the outlets situated at different locations. Hence you can plan in advance and replenish the stock on time. It relieves you from the nagging problem of facing disgruntled customers.
Helps in proactive decision making
Even before problem arises, the food service establishments can come up with a solution. This is made possible by the intelligent insights provide by the SCM platforms. Capturing the real-time data help you track the incorrect product pickups or returns. As it involves dealing with multiple distributors, you will easily get to know which distributor is running short of inventory, the current location of the trucks and the estimated time of arrival. Having all the information beforehand helps save a lot of overhead expenses.
Accurate forecasting
The sales projections provided by SCM platforms help food establishments to make all the arrangements in advance. Accurate forecasts can also help you immensely in the future expansion of your restaurant. It also provides forecasts on cost affects because of changes in commodities, volumes and other processes.
Better control on invoicing
When the processes are managed using manual efforts, handling a vast amount of distributor invoices is a tedious task. As the process is automated in SCM platforms, it helps cut down manual efforts to a large extent and improves the overall productivity of the team.
Parting Words
Gone are those days when managing supply chain was chaotic because of the excessive dependency on manual work. A robust supply chain management software has become an imperative as the food service establishments are cashing in on the boom in home delivery services. It helps in better co-ordination between suppliers, vendors, customers, delivery staff and various other elements in the supply chain. It also helps you gain a clear advantage over the competition.
