With the workforce returning, the catering industry has naturally had to fill the gaps in their teams, to bring back colleagues and look for new staff.
There are gaps - but let’s think about how some of these can be filled with some innovation...
Some of the more honest job adverts should perhaps include... “We’re looking for enthusiastic catering staff to answer the phone and reply to emails! Experience in shuffling paper preferred.”
Or “Looking for a creative, catering manager, who loves producing great food - and doesn’t mind giving up a Friday evening or Saturday morning doing admin.”
Every job has it’s less appealing aspects of course, but surely there is a need to avoid the soul destroying, time consuming tasks. Too often they are part of a ‘We’ve always done it this way’ mindset, or a failure to recognise that avoiding innovation is often a false economy.
To be blunt, gaps aren’t always filled by additional staff.
3 examples of processes which save time and allows focus on success
Mind the Gap in the Ordering Process
Ordering food online has grown hugely. This has been seen most clearly in the B2C market but it is now expected in the B2B corporate world too. But this is a big step up from ordering a pizza for you and a friend. These can be sizable, complicated orders, often with multiple time slots, numerous dietary requirements. The checkout page may need fields for delivery rooms, special set-up instructions, order approval, mandatory PO numbers and more. All of this requires a sophisticated, comprehensive solution if it is going to be efficient.
If there are gaps in the process then confidence in the booking is undermined and this naturally leads to calls and emails to check. It doesn’t need to be this way.
Mind the Pennies…
For Ops directors having a software system which ensures that revenue is not lost unnecessarily is just too obvious to warrant mentioning isn’t it...and yet here we are!!
It’s simple to reduce your revenue: orders (often it’s edits to orders) are on separate emails or piece of paper orders can't be charged due to PO numbers missing mistakes are being made too often, causing refunds These issues are an unfortunate reality for too many catering operations.
Spoonfed has a set of solutions to tackle all these properly. And crucially, since time is money, with a handful of clicks csv order reports can be produced or SFTP invoices can be processed automatically each evening. Spoonfed have also just released a new fully featured ‘Order Approval’ function for even more efficiency and accuracy. Features to tackle the reality of catering operation pain points.
Mind over (things that don’t) matter
Knowledge is power. However, wasting time wading through irrelevant data is something to be avoided. This is at the other end of the process from customers placing their orders. However, there’s a big picture, and for many catering managers and Ops directors being able to monitor and report on all aspects of the business will have big implications. The tech solutions to enable the building of bespoke Custom Reports are now available on the Spoonfed system allowing managers to focus on thriving not just surviving. Developing future plans, guiding budgets and improving decision-making by drilling down into the relevant information needs to be at the finger tips of management.
Placing these innovations into the hands of your managers and staff is how to value them. Speak with one of the Spoonfed team today for a demo on these key features and more.
