How effective supply can boost your business

Do you still believe in visiting a restaurant? Or are you the one who believes in taking food at ease? If you’re one of those people, have you ever thought of the challenges faced by the restaurant owners and food delivery players while delivering your favourite food at your doorstep.

Also, the love for food is universal and it comes with the promise of instant delivery. You may be able to apply that math to online shopping for apparels and other items, but certainly not food.

Building an integrated supply chain

With food business expanding multi-dimensionally it is making a way forward to invite global investments in India and with this growth the food sector is expected to undergo a major revolution over the next few years. The emergence of super consumers, who are vulnerable to price points and fulfilment and delivery of their orders, has shifted the focus of top restaurants and food platforms in the country streamlining the cost of operation without tampering quality and service of the raw materials.

“The idea of integrated supply chain especially in food was to control quality as well as bring in efficiency. Most importantly it is inventory control,” said, Manish Aggarwal, VP, Gati Kausar.

Losses at storage and while transportation is a continuous problem in India which is hampering the growth of fast evolving food business in India leading to a poor inventory control due to poor supply chain. And, this is making the logistics and supply chain companies to come up with facilities so that they could centralise the procurement at top hotels and restaurant chains based on their demand forecast. This also help the restaurant majors decide on how much inventory to hold at what location and thus plan their logistic. This helps them save both their logistic costs as well as inventory holding space.

Challenges faced

When the restaurants start off their volume is not large enough to fill the entire truck load and therefore they hire service providers to cater to their needs. And, with big supply chain providers like Gati Kausar, Snowman and ColdEx today they may scale up from small operations to large.

Not only this, one of the major challenges in logistics is of trained man power. Other challenges happens when restaurant professionals are dealing with companies and they have logistic teams that is bifurcated into primary, secondary distribution and storage and it’s difficult for them to sometime co-ordinate with all three.

“We are building a professional and next generation logistics team which is both tech savvy and consumer responsive. Recruiting and training such manpower is our biggest priority,” shared Rajesh Sawhney, Co-Founder, InnerChef who has given his customers choice of selecting hourly delivery slots, seven days in advance. “This helps us in planning our deliveries well. We have our own delivery teams, but we also work with external delivery organizations,” added Sawhney.

What’s catching up?

Not only logistics but delivery of the raw materials and food items at a very competitive duration is making wave in the industry. Inspired by McDonalds which has set the tone for 30 minutes delivery many food start ups are eyeing new customers with promising delivery timing, all thanks to the growing demands.

Breakfast 7-11 a Gurgaon based start-up which is only catering to the breakfast customers has done a fairly good job of meeting delivery time (45 mins) 85 per cent of the time.

“Occasionally we do increase expected delivery time if we expect delays due to traffic/rain or distance. However there are occasional unexpected delays as well- Gurgaon's roads and infrastructure leaves a lot to be desired plus the temperament of the riders,” added Manshu, Co-Founder at Breakfast 7-11.

And, as food delivery has two peaks, one in the afternoon and second during the dinner time managing peak time load efficiently remains major challenge. But, with quality and timeliness of traffic and infrastructure the logistics and delivery scenario in India may disrupt the fast evolving food business scenario.