Growth is great. It means your business is capturing an excited audience, providing excellent products or services, and generally just doing things the right way. Growth is what every business longs for.
Growth is also a headache. Because if you're going to connect with a bigger audience, you also have to be capable of serving that audience. If you're providing top-notch products and services, you also have to innovate and optimize to stay top-notch. And if your objective is to run an efficient, cost-effective company (and what businessperson doesn't desire that?), then you need a plan for a future that is efficient and cost-effective.
One of the most exciting growing businesses in America right now is a top chain of salad and healthier foods restaurants. With dozens of locations coming online each of the past few years, this health-conscious eatery has rapidly been making its mark on the country's food landscape. They've definitely captured a passionate fanbase, are serving up yummy creations all day, and now, with a little help from On Time Supplies, they've got a plan for cost-effective expansion.
But things weren't always so simple for this brand. Their amazing food and great service did the hard work of creating the impetus for growth. Unfortunately, practical and logistical necessities then had a habit of ruining their ability to open new locations with maximum smoothness and efficiency. The restaurant found themselves looking for a partner to iron out the bumps in the road so they could proceed with their plans for a successful future.
Renee Schmidt, one of the restaurant's top supply chain team members, had a straightforward task: help ensure new locations always received all the office supplies, cleaning products, anti-Covid items, and other supplies every new store needed. "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 continued working with On Time Supplies, she got to know Miles and the team.
As more and more locations kept opening, Renee found herself repeating orders over and over again. Since each store required so much, the process soon became tedious and repetitive — to say nothing of being inefficient, as well as allowing for potential errors to creep into place.
"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!
"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, this was the genesis of genius.
Renee and her team began compiling reports for standard orders: store-opening orders, regular resupply orders, emergency restocks, and more. With help from Miles and the On Time Supplies crew, the reports were fed into a customized order guide. Soon, all Renee and her colleagues had to do was access the order guide, make a selection, choose a date, and leave the rest up to us.
"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. And that really is how the system works for her company. All she and her team need to do is occasionally update the order guide to reflect specific requests or updated priorities. After that, On Time Supplies does the legwork of finding the supplies, arranging shipping, and even providing support after the products have left the warehouses.
Renee summed up her experience with On Time Supplies by making an observation: "I've learned that you should work with partners who make life easier for you. If they aren't, you should switch partners." So just how much easier did our work together make things for Renee?
"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. We do about a hundred of those every year." Doing the math, that means On Time Supplies is helping Renee personally save over 66 hours of work every year. That's time she's free to reinvest in other areas of concern, meaning even more problems can find solutions.
Over a week and half of normal productivity has been reclaimed from the tedious, slow, error-prone ordering process Renee would have to use with most other office supply providers. Not only does that equal more cost-effectiveness and efficiency today, but it represents a plan for keeping Renee's restaurant cost-effective and efficient long into the future.
That plan is one of the key components in any business's ability to grow consistently and successfully. Renee's company had (and has) all the other components — excited audience, amazing food, etc. — all accounted for. Now, with their customized order guide ready and waiting for them at On Time Supplies, the company has tamed their inventory needs and can operate more quickly, smoothly, and accurately. That's a guaranteed recipe for bold growth.