Restaurant Supply Procurement: How a Growing Salad Chain Automated Multi-Location Ordering

RESULTS AT A GLANCE

Metric	Before	With On Time Supplies
Time per outbound order	~40 min, manual	Automated via order guide
Orders handled each year	100+ manual reorders	100+ scheduled automatically
Annual time reclaimed	--	66+ hours (1.5+ work weeks)
Order accuracy	Prone to manual errors	Standardized, repeatable

The Need: Supplying Rapid Multi-Location Growth

Growth is what every business wants. It means you are connecting with a bigger audience, delivering products and services people love, and building momentum. It is also a logistical challenge because serving a larger audience means every new location must open ready to operate from day one.

One of the fastest-growing names in American fast-casual dining is a leading chain of salad and healthier-food restaurants. With dozens of locations coming online over the past few years, this health-conscious eatery has built a passionate following. The food and service created the demand for growth. The practical side of opening new stores, sourcing and delivering every supply each location needed, is where the process kept hitting friction.

Each new restaurant required a reliable flow of office supplies, cleaning and disinfecting products, hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes, and breakroom essentials. The chain needed a supply partner who could keep pace with that expansion without slowing it down.

The Challenge: Repetitive, Error-Prone Bulk Orders

Renee Schmidt, a member of the restaurant's supply chain team, had a straightforward mandate: make sure every new location received all the supplies it needed to open its doors. “I worked, and still work, with new location teams across the country. I helped them get what they needed to get their doors open,” she said.

“We used On Time Supplies already for office supplies throughout the company, and we'd been using them even more since Covid broke out. They always had sanitizer products we needed.” As Renee kept working with On Time Supplies, she got to know Miles and the account team.

But as locations multiplied, Renee found herself placing the same complex orders over and over. Each store required a large, detailed supply list, and the manual process quickly became tedious, repetitive, and inefficient, with room for costly mistakes to creep in.

“These were large, complicated orders, and we were doing 100 or more every year. There had to be a simpler way that would save time and cut down on mistakes.” The good news: there was.

The Solution: A Custom Order Guide and Automated Reordering

“I had been working with Miles to identify and set up routine orders for locations. I then asked him, can I send you a report and you send out an order automatically on the date it needs to be sent out?” For Renee and her company, that question was the starting point for the solution.

Renee and her team compiled reports for their standard order types, then handed the details to the On Time Supplies crew, who fed them into a customized order guide:

• Store-opening orders to stock each new location from day one
• Regular resupply orders to keep active stores running on schedule
• Emergency restocks for fast replacement when supplies ran short

Once the guide was built, the workflow became simple: access the order guide, make a selection, choose a date, and leave the rest to On Time Supplies. The team now sources the products, arranges shipping, and provides support after the cleaning supplies, paper products, and other items leave the warehouse.

“Miles and the team know all the details of our orders, and they've taken over managing those details. That's a big win for me. It allows me the time to work on other important things,” said Renee. All she and her team do now is occasionally update the order guide to reflect new requests or shifting priorities.

The same setup is available to any business buyer. On Time Supplies supports bulk ordering with volume pricing and scheduled reorders, plus Net 30 terms and business credit that free up cash flow while supplies are already on the shelf.

The Success: 66+ Hours Reclaimed Every Year

Renee summed up her experience with a simple principle: “I've learned that you should work with partners who make life easier for you. If they aren't, you should switch partners.” So how much easier did the partnership make things?

“It makes my life so much easier because I don't have to make the orders myself. It saves me 40 minutes for every outbound order, and we do about a hundred of those every year.” Doing the math, that is more than 66 hours saved every year, over a week and a half of productivity reclaimed from a slow, error-prone process.

“It saves me 40 minutes for every outbound order, and we do about a hundred of those every year.” That adds up to more than 66 hours reclaimed annually for one supply chain lead.

That reclaimed time is now reinvested into higher-value work, which means more operational problems get solved. With a customized order guide ready and waiting, the chain has tamed its inventory needs and can open and run locations more quickly, smoothly, and accurately. For a business built for growth, that is a dependable foundation for expansion.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can a restaurant chain simplify supply ordering across multiple locations?

Standardize each location's needs into repeatable order templates, then use a custom order guide with scheduled reordering. In this case study, On Time Supplies built store-opening, resupply, and emergency-restock orders into a single guide, so the team can simply select an order and a date rather than rebuilding it each time.

What supplies do new restaurant locations need at opening?

A typical opening order includes office supplies, cleaning and disinfecting products, hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes, paper towels and tissues, and breakroom and coffee supplies.

How much time can automated reordering save?

In this case, automating outbound orders saved roughly 40 minutes per order across more than 100 orders a year, for over 66 hours reclaimed annually. Savings scale with order volume and complexity.

Does On Time Supplies support bulk and multi-location business accounts?

Yes. On Time Supplies works with business buyers on recurring bulk orders and can set up a custom order guide for scheduled, repeatable purchasing across locations.