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Hundreds of restaurants in the same geographic area will be purchasing ingredients from a variety of different suppliers, based on their need. If they clubbed
by johnlbevan2 10y ago
Hundreds of restaurants in the same geographic area will be purchasing ingredients from a variety of different suppliers, based on their need.
If they clubbed together with other local businesses to source common ingredients they could benefit from economies of scale; i.e. instead of 100 restaurants each buying 200 onions, there'd be a bulk order for 20,000 onions; meaning 1 lorry to deliver direct from the supplier(s) rather than multiple vans to cover each supplier/buyer combo.
i.e. Create a platform that would allow suppliers to list what they're selling, buyers to list their needs, and match these up with one another.
- Group similar suppliers or buyers together geographically to help improve the efficiency of individual orders by making them part of a larger collective order.
- Add filter options so that when buying people can specify certain criteria (e.g. "I only want potatoes from soil-association approved suppliers").
- Now people don't buy from suppliers, but rather buy from a service/pool.
- ...and people don't sell to buyers, but rather sell to the service/pool.
- This same model works regardless of supplier or buyer size; i.e. benefits both big and small (though the benefits to smaller companies are more significant as they start to get the benefits of scale that the larger ones have anyway).
Though I'd start with restaurants (i.e. to keep the platform focussed / avoid being too broad too soon), this same platform could over time expand for any purchasing interactions.
- bpicolo 10y agoThis is the reason distributors already exist. Almost all restaurants buy almost all of their ingredients through food distributors (or on occasion just the local Costco). Not saying that there's not room to grow in this area, but it's definitely not the case that restaurants are buying straight from a bunch of individual suppliers, minus restaurants aiming for hyper-local or small batch ingredients.
- 14113 10y agoAnd the ones that are buying from individual suppliers are doing so for non-economic reasons, e.g. "buying local", or specialised produce variants.
- sparkzilla 10y agoDon't do this. You will fail. Restaurant managers don't have enough time to get involved in this, many restaurants are in competition with each other, and the existing relationships they have with distributors are very strong. Also, read Peter Thiel's book "Zero to One" -- don't enter highly competitive markets that have low margins.
- subpixel 10y agoI recently learned about Jetro which is essentially a Costco for small restaurants and a massive business in this space.
- rojobuffalo 10y agoRestaurant supply chains could be improved by investing in local farmers. Less time and energy spent on transport enables fresher food; and the local money multiplier is a goood thing too. I'm working on something aimed at this.
- nether 10y agoIn LA at least, this is common among high end restaurants. Certain chefs have relationships with specific farmers, or they have food buyers select the best produce at the Santa Monica Farmers Market. I suspect most restaurants just buy from normal distributors because it's cheaper though.
- rojobuffalo 10y agoI've also noticed this with better restaurants. I think specialist buyers and distributors will continue to serve a role; and so will farmers' markets. But my thought is it's better when shareholders buy-in for a season. The farmer gets more operating capital up-front and spends less time on sales during the harvest, because distributions can be figured out ahead of time.
- adammcnamara 10y agoCheck out http://chefhero.com http://chefhero.com
- phreanix 10y agoRestaurant Depot, we all go there. At least those of us in proximity of one. Been trying to do this on a smaller scale (pooling the needs of restaurants in foodparks), and it is horribly difficult. There are so many factors at play (demand changes day to day, spoilage, etc.) Even with software to automate the process, the delivery logistics would be too time consuming for your average restaurant owner to get into.