Inside Food Business Operations | DeliDelights
Running a food business today usually involves more technology than we sometimes realize.
Sales may be recorded through a point-of-sale system. Customer orders may arrive through an online store or delivery platform. Inventory may be monitored using software or spreadsheets. Accounting may run on another application. Suppliers and employees may communicate through messaging apps.
On the surface, much of the business has become digital.
But there is another question worth asking:
Are all these parts of the business actually connected well enough to help us make better and more timely decisions?
The distinction between being digital and being operationally connected is becoming increasingly important—particularly as a food business grows.
Many Digital Tools, One Business
Consider a fairly common situation.
A restaurant, café, retailer or other food business receives customer orders electronically. Sales information is available digitally. Someone keeps track of inventory, perhaps through a system or spreadsheet.
Purchasing, however, may maintain its own records.
Supplier orders may be sent through email, Viber, Messenger or text message. Delivery schedules may be discussed separately. Receiving may record what actually arrived using another document or process.
None of these practices is necessarily wrong.
In fact, many developed precisely because they are practical. A spreadsheet can work very well. Messaging a trusted supplier may be the fastest way to place an order. A paper receiving record may be perfectly adequate for a particular operation.
The challenge begins when information from one activity is needed to make a decision somewhere else in the business.
That is where being digital and being connected become two different things.
Consider a Simple Inventory Example
Suppose sales of a particular menu item increase unexpectedly.
The sales system knows that more units were sold.
Inventory records may show that stock is declining.
Someone in the kitchen or stockroom may already notice that a key ingredient is running low.
The supplier, meanwhile, may require several days to replenish that ingredient.
All the information needed to recognize a potential stockout may already exist.
But does it come together?
More importantly:
Does it reach the person who needs to make the purchasing decision early enough to do something about it?
If not, the problem may not be the absence of information.
The problem may be the way information moves—or fails to move—between different parts of the operation.
The Gaps Between Systems Matter
Businesses understandably spend a great deal of time selecting tools.
Which POS should we use?
How should we track inventory?
Which accounting software is appropriate?
Should customers be able to order online?
These are important questions.
But there is another set of questions that may deserve equal attention:
What happens between these systems?
When a sale occurs, does that information help the person responsible for replenishment?
When inventory reaches a certain level, does someone know that action may be required?
When a supplier cannot fulfill an order completely, who needs to know?
When delivery is delayed, what other decisions are affected?
When demand changes, how quickly does that information influence the next purchasing decision?
A business can have several good digital tools and still rely heavily on people to manually connect the information between them.
As operations become more complex, those gaps can become increasingly important.
Manual Does Not Necessarily Mean Bad
It is tempting to assume that every manual process should be automated.
That may not always be the right conclusion.
Small and growing businesses often develop processes around what is available, affordable and practical. A spreadsheet, phone call or message can sometimes be more efficient than implementing a complicated system.
Technology should serve the business—not make the business unnecessarily complicated.
The more useful question may therefore be:
Which information and decisions are important enough that they should not depend entirely on someone remembering to connect them?
That shifts the discussion away from technology for technology's sake.
It puts the focus back on the operation.
Start With the Decision, Not the Technology
Before asking whether another application or system is needed, it may be useful to start with a few basic questions:
What decision are we trying to make?
What information is needed to make that decision?
Where does that information currently come from?
Who needs it?
When do they need it?
What happens if the information arrives too late—or not at all?
Consider purchasing again.
The decision may appear simple:
How much should we order?
But answering it properly may require information about current inventory, recent usage or sales, expected demand, existing purchase orders, supplier availability, delivery lead time and perhaps even upcoming promotions or events.
The challenge is not merely having each piece of information somewhere.
The challenge is making the relevant information available when the decision has to be made.
From Digital Activities to Connected Operations
Digitalization has already created significant opportunities for food businesses.
But perhaps the next opportunity is not simply to digitize more activities.
It is to understand how the activities we have already digitized can work together more effectively.
Sales should inform inventory.
Inventory should inform purchasing.
Purchasing should consider supplier availability and lead times.
Receiving should update what the business actually has.
And management should be able to understand what is happening across these activities well enough to make timely decisions.
The objective is not necessarily to create a completely automated business.
It is to create a business in which information supports action rather than simply being recorded.
A Question Worth Asking
For those of us involved in operating food businesses, perhaps a useful exercise is to look at one everyday process—purchasing, inventory, receiving, fulfillment or another important activity—and ask:
Where does useful information stop flowing?
The answer may be a spreadsheet.
It may be a messaging conversation.
It may be a piece of paper.
It may be between two departments.
Or it may simply be information that somebody knows but that nobody else sees until a problem occurs.
Identifying these gaps does not automatically mean that another system is required.
But it can help us understand where better processes, better information—or eventually better technology—could make a meaningful difference.
Because a business can be increasingly digital without necessarily becoming increasingly connected.
And perhaps the more important measure of progress is not simply how much technology we use, but how well information helps us make better decisions.
Author: Wilfredo Manansala
DeliDelights: Inside Food Business Operations
This article is part of DeliDelights' Inside Food Business Operations series—practical observations about the everyday challenges of running food businesses, including inventory, purchasing, supply, fulfillment, information and decision-making.