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Save our food supply chain

How to keep small business affected by the pandemic afloat and thrive again? And to prevent foot waste from restaurants to upstream with supply chain practices

Government Assistance for small businesses

With small business administration emergency loans, it offers forgivable grants up to 2.5 of business average monthly payroll for utility bills, payroll, commercial rent, and overhead expenses, etc. While restaurants are expected to remain close during the pandemic, they are allowed to offer their service through take out or delivery platforms.

Background

I choose food industry to begin with the case study because this is not the time to waste abundant food while so many people are having hard time to put food on the table for their families. If all those food waste is simply due to supply chain disruption, this is not okay for any supply chain professional out there to sit and not do anything about it.

I am no expert in food industry but I have a sound mind with passion and expertise in supply chain, and love for our communities and this great nation. I built business model from scratch in college that become my source of income to come to states for supply chain study. I helped building a solid growth driven business from $15 million to $69 million in 7 years.

I am trained to streamline to remap the process for supply chain to run smoothly and to further help businesses to find ways to sustain, to improve and to thrive. With my background, I also have track of record to find creative ways to help business building their competitive advantages and bring steady and growing revenue. Therefore, I am going to share my thought process on rescuing small businesses and hope I am helping in some forms.

Restaurants business is a big portion of business for local farmers, producers and food wholesales business. With restaurants are negatively affected by this challenging time, this also creates a ripple effect in the overall food supply chain. The upstream food supply chain is nowhere less damaged even though the impact on the upstream supply chain is so invisible to public eyes.

We have to be crystal clear that we are living in a circular system. We are interdependent to each other as individuals and businesses. We cannot overcome the crisis and win until we lift each other.

With this in mind, the sounded strategies are required to consider the entire food supply chain to create sustainable solutions for the money spent. My goal is to create strategies to take care of the overall supply chain for a sustainable result.

Data collection in a macro level is imperative so we can form strategies that can amend the key areas that bring the best outcome. It is a data collection from all local restaurants to understand their overall supply chain so we can trace upward to learn the overall picture proportionally to address the food supply chain altogether to further implement appropriate strategies in each part of process that makes the differences to save our small business in food industry.

Reality to throw out milk and produce

You cannot ask cow to stop producing milk because demand is reduced. Our produces were planted based on historical data. Nobody would see this pandemic coming to reduce the planting at the beginning. While the demand from the restaurants is greatly reduced, our farmers and producers have over supply stock with very short shelf life. We are talking about huge food waste potential while this is especially not the time to waste food with so many people having hard time to put food on the table. This is why we need to re-route the supply chain to keep process flowing again.

This pandemic brings a certain level of damage to every single individual and businesses in the world. Do I believe food demand is all the sudden dropped this drastically with a combination of restaurants and groceries? I see part of demand from restaurants shifting toward the demand from groceries but what we are experiencing is that the overall food demand declined. Do I believe we are eating less than we normally do? I believe some household may have to out of necessities but I am hopeful this is not the case for average households. With this hopeful belief, I think there are still demand we can plug in to help restaurants, local farmers, and producers.

Realistic Goal

The goal is to find ways to help restaurants to keep servicing the needs that still waiting to be addressed while maintaining a certain level of food demand from their suppliers. With many people are facing economy hardships, the restaurant demand is not going to be the same as the time prior but if managing well in this pandemic, businesses shall survive and maybe thrive again when time comes.

What I am proposing is a real possibility to keep your business open and to thrive while keeping the staff that are determined to ride this wave with you and you continue to be a great partner for your suppliers, landlord and community.

Ready for strategies to survive and thrive when time comes?

Go getting government GRANTS

For small business restaurants, it is time to take the government grants to cover payroll, rent, utility bills and overhead expenses. It is essentially free money to keep the business afloat for a bit longer while we implement strategies for money well spent. I know you are on it but really, stay on top of it and follow through until you get the money you are entitled to.

Stretch budget

The philosophy is to adapt to this changing demand. While loan application in process, owners need to do your best to stretch the loan. It is like handing your personal finance in the crisis. It is time to print out your bank statement to go line by line for each expense. You can only afford necessities like payroll, utilities, rent, operation expenses and everything else is to put on hold or cancel. You need to think crystal clear to survive.

Simplified menu offer

Other than payroll and rent, food expenses should be the next big operational expense. This is not the time for any food waste. You want every investing produce to generate profit for you. With this changing demand, it is not wise to keep your standard comprehensive menu anymore. Whether by connecting with your customers or digging into your historical bestselling dishes, it is time to create a concise menu options to aid to the lean inventory control. Yes, we need to adopt lean strategy to be agile.

Depends on your business size, it can be 2 to 3 options for lunch and dinner and switch things up each day. Speaking of switching things up, you can keep one option to be staple option across the board until you see the demand declining drastically for a change. This staple option can be your top winning dish at all time.

This is a concept of keeping light on while simplified for a cleaner operation in the backend. While evaluating the winning ones, you should consider the recipes accommodating well with excess produce in the supply chain. I am talking about milk or those fresh produce that our farmers and producers have no way to stop the supply at this point of time.

If you are not doing your best to stop bleeding for your suppliers, you will be impacted at a later time. It is time to work collaboratively for the entire food industry for you to survive. Working closely with your suppliers to create ways to help each other out is a critical way to survive and thrive sustainably.

Do you see how this simplified menu concept can help restaurants and upstream supply chain already if every single local restaurants following this philosophy? Do not forget — you want to put your winning dishes on this ever simplified menu so you can bring your loyal customers back to help you out during this time.

Create demand transparency

Next is a strategy to leverage your connection with your customers through your online presence and social media. Remember, this is a changing time with demand all over the place. It is not the time for any food waste. It would be most ideal to understand how much you need to cook up for each day. Supply chain is all about transparency.

Offering your weekly simplified menu on your online platform for your loyal and capable customers to place orders with the time and date they need. Yes, encouraging them to place order days ahead. Awareness of this platform by promoting through your social media channels is imperative for an accurate projection. You want to continue to fine tune ways to get to more accurate demand data to help you plan your buying strategies and reduce potential food waste.

Voucher packages

Creating voucher packages for corporates, schools, neighborhood associations, event planning businesses can help keeping the demand going. It is a great way to expand your customer base. It is more aggressive approach to connect the potential customers in scale than waiting customers to come in. Targeting businesses is the most effective effort for the greater impact.

Keep in mind, businesses will open again. They will have Christmas party demand even with smaller scale. They will have needs for corporate lunch. Event will slowly come back. For the best of luck, it is wiser to target ones that are financially sound and lasting for years.

You may need to tap into your network or communities and see how you can get this approach to the fruition. Work with each business to create a plan that is attractive to them and workable for your restaurant and your suppliers. Remember, you should have your suppliers support to help driving business home. Having business to back up at this time will ensure your door remains open for longer time.

Discounted gift card offering

For individual customers, offering discount gift card during this period of time is great way to keep the string while getting an immediate cash flow. You need to keep cash flowing in during this challenging time to keep you afloat until things start getting better. A slight discount is totally worthy it. You want to do it now before you are soon running out of fund.

You can also explore a possibility of subscription plan to keep the string. It is all about creating immediate income stream to keep the light on while offering values to your customers in different ways. There are many ways to go about it. We just need to evaluate what may be the best way for everyone.

Drive to your customers

Can you get inspiration from ice cream truck? Can you foresee a way to drive to your customers with packaged meals instead of waiting for them to come in? All you need is to have coolers and chef made delicious meals. You can drive to business parking lots during lunch hours and to neighborhood during dinner hours. Of course, you need to promote the campaign before starting to drive around to create the awareness. Making it easy for your customers is the most effective way to win the business because you just save their trouble on driving to a place for food.

Cooking classes

Offering streaming cooking classes with fee or without for your winning dish or any cooking technique teaching is another way to keep your chef doing what they are good at. This can be once a week to begin with after making awareness for this campaign.

Filming it to be available for public at a later time is another way for continuous branding. This is unique way for engagement and to continue to bond with your loyal customers during this time of social distancing. From each cooking class, you want to create and publish recipe with images to share with your customers for continuous engagement and push it through all social media platforms. Connection is the key to stay active in your community so your business is not forgettable. It will help bringing your customers back for years to come.

Mini neighborhood grocery store

Now, let’s go deeper on partnering with your suppliers to reduce food waste. We all know people have to do grocery. We know as much as we can do now, the restaurant demand is still weaker than it used to be. It is unavoidable there are food surplus for our suppliers following historical demand on their planning. Let’s be creative and see how we can be in the middle so you can be competitive or in a relevant cost range for grocery offering.

While you are doing the right thing to help your suppliers by being their front door, many capable loyal customers will foot in to help out if costing in in the range for them. Let’s bring those excess food into your restaurant the way they normally comes in and let’s package them to the appropriate size for grocery venue for store pick up.

Let’s be creative here to vision your restaurant transforming into a neighborhood grocery store and see if there is anything you can fill in the needs. You can make your chef signature sauces, different version of cooking cream, chef made yogurt, dissert, chef made cheese, pasta sources into packages so your customer can have it for their cooking. Whatever chef can extend the food offering to its wide selection is where you can win big.

Like taking excess milk supply, we can make yogurt, ice cream, lots of cakes, pies, desserts, ricotta cheese. Create like you would in the survival mode in the war is the intensity you want at this time.

Any creation you can come up with to prevent any food waste from this food supply chain is what you are after. This is the way you can keep your business afloat, keep your people attached, helping your communities, your suppliers, and your customers. And this is the way your business will be resilient and be ready to thrive when this crisis becomes a history, and it will.

Giving back

And unfortunately, you may still see excess food as much as you all try because most people are suffering from this economy downturn. They are stretching the budget like you are for your restaurant. While in hard time, the worst is to have food going to waste. For this, I recommend creating a venue to make meals for first responders and people in need by partnering with your suppliers to collect the consistent excess food supply.

Everyone involved to make the support possible would feel great and this is precious feeling we all need during this difficult time and this is far better result than having food waste. Gifting to people in need and show our appreciations to the first responders in the hard time when you are able is simply a good circle for our communities.

Some may feel very exotic idea but trust me — if you stay still, your outcome is probably like what it is now. Only when you change your thinking, your course will be possible to be changed.

How to start

For any of these strategies to work, I do not recommend to go out and hiring. Instead, you need to look deeper with the people you have. Remember, my goal is to make your business survive and thrive with the staff and suppliers you have. Each staff, waiter, waitress and chef possesses other skillsets to help you survive together in this difficult time. We need everyone to understand we need their contribution in a much different ways they are used to while earning the very much deserved income. Working together creatively is a path to win, win, win and WINNNNNNN.

Task assignment explorations, be creative!

· Simplified menu creation with customers input– chefs, manager with historical data

· Social Media, website engagement, data collection –staff, waiter or waitress

· Social media campaign innovations and planning– owner, manager, staff, waiter or waitress

· Strategies evaluation, modifications and executions — owner and manager

· Cooking classes planning and executions — manager, staffs, chef, waiter or waitress

· Grocery venue coordination, packaging — manager, staff, waiter or waitress

· Voucher Packages design and business development — owner, manager

· online platform — one of your staff may run their personal blog. They may be your source of talent to build your online ordering platform with so many template built in available. I promise it is not as costly.

Vision sharing to enlist support

Now you have directions on how you want to approach your business. This step is super super critical. You need to schedule meetings with your suppliers, landlord, and employee to brainstorm the opportunities. Generally speaking, your overall supply chain is in this crisis together. You only win this by doing it together. You want to stay afloat, same to your employee, your suppliers and your landlord. How you all can work together to help each other to stay afloat is to be openly discussing the possibilities that may work for everyone.

You want to present your plan on how you can help business staying afloat while seeking support from each party. With a plan in mind to start the discussion, you are likely to walk out the meetings with landlord’s help for 10%-20% of discount on rent for 3 or 6 months, food source discounts and potential collaboration ideas with your suppliers that I did not mention here, calmer employee knowing you are doing your best to keep their job while seeking ways to utilize their other strengths. Do not ever underestimate how impactful your employee can be for your business.

Having everyone on the same page and sharing the goal is imperative to help you stretch your budget for longer while making plan becomes in reality.

I am hopeful this essay is fruit of thoughts for any party in the food supply chain. I am interested in learning what’s working so far and what’s not so we can continue to help our communities to stay afloat and to rebuild. If you need help on more details to execute some of ideas, I am happy to help in any form and hearing your thoughts. Please reach out at the contact page.

In the meantime, I am seeking for next industry to create another case study. If you have any thoughts on the direction I should go about, please reach out via contact page.

Stay healthy and Stay strong.

What your Garden Teaches You?

Save our food supply chain

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