Food and beverage companies can now digitize their commissary

Food and beverage executives spend a lot of their time on employee performance and customer satisfaction. There is one more thing many of them can now use to improve their business a great deal.

Restaurants, cafes and beverage companies with many branches across a region or the country usually supply those branches from a commissary. Food gets prepared centrally and distributed to all the outlets, which makes production more efficient.

Many companies have run commissaries this way for years, but usually by hand. Managing the communication, the delivery schedules and the whole process can get tedious.

Manual processes can also hurt the customer experience. If the goods don't make it to the outlet, staff have to tell customers the item is out of stock, which is embarrassing and is money lost.

A digital commissary can centralize communications and automate these processes.

The Abaca Group, known for a group of restaurants that feature local products and high quality service, adopted this digital commissary system and improved their operations. Running more efficiently, they keep more customers happy.

This is how the commissary system works.

Branch supervisor:

• Logs in to the commissary system
• Selects items to order from the "Top Items" (pick list per brand and per branch)
• Submits order

Central commissary:

• Receives order from branch
• As necessary: adjust the quantity of items
• Fulfills the order

When the order is ready, the items go to the branch, which accepts them and gives feedback.

Symph built this digital commissary system for the Abaca Group. It moved all communication onto the platform and automated how their branches are managed. Central commissary administrators can see every available item and define a custom list for each brand and branch to pick from. Ordering is simpler, and the central commissary and the company executives get better visibility and control over operations.

At Symph we want to #CreateBetter systems that help businesses do what they do best, and we build them hand-in-hand with our clients.

If you see a similar opportunity in your business, send us a message and tell us how we can help.

Story by Cyra Congson, Symph Intern 2018