Background
Al Desco delivers gourmet food to businesses in London, with prepared platters for group meetings, client lunches and other time-dependent occasions. Timely delivery is critical, with strict deadlines for food in line with customers’ diaries. Hot or chilled food needed to arrive at the agreed time.
The problem
The business needed to improve customer experience by addressing all operational areas; orders, preparation and stock levels, delivery and invoicing. The full ordering process was manual. It included placing, creation, and delivery or orders, accurate invoicing and billing, and ordering and maintenance of stock levels. This manual process required excessive hours to implement it each day. In addition, the business had difficulty in a number of production areas: low preparation guidance for staff resulting in high wastage levels; associating specific food types and quantities for each individual menu item; and accurate food purchasing.
Typically, orders were placed over the phone and through the website and then manually placed onto the system to be processed, prepared and delivered the next day. Customers would usually contact Al Desco on the day of delivery to confirm that their order was in hand. This additional contact placed great strain on Al Desco’s team, who needed to focus on preparing and delivering the orders.
Providing accurate and time-driven delivery updates was difficult, and this created uncertainty for both client and Al Desco. Creating precise delivery runs and loading levels was reliant on the personal knowledge of the owner. Once an order had been dispatched there was no visibility on the progress of the delivery, and if it would arrive on time.
Without an integrated and automated ordering, food preparation, stock control and delivery system, maintaining profitability was difficult.
