OPINION Mezze is an online ordering platform designed specifically for the food manufacturing industry, offering an alternative to traditional email, phone and fax ordering. Utilised by Samworth Brothers, Simply Lunch and the Real Wrap Co, it’s this food industry focus that gives its approach the edge over its more generic rivals, argues Mezze’s Hugo Walker. ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY? It should come as a surprise to no one that food companies which have tried to implement large-scale ordering solutions in the past are hesitant to give it a second chance. Remember the expense? The complication? The undelivered promises of a pot of efficiency gold at the end of the implementation rainbow? Why would you go through all that again? You might be using your ERP’s (Enterprise Resource Planning) generic ordering platform. You might be using an off the shelf solution. You might have built your own ordering software, probably based on a generic blueprint for what an ordering platform ‘ought to look like’. Chances are that what you have ended up with has been heavily customised to suit food industryspecific needs. Broad solutions like these have their place. No one is suggesting you should bin your ERP, which has all sorts of back-office firepower your business needs, but in my opinion, when it comes to ordering, a generic platform can’t meet the unique ordering needs of today’s food to go (FTG) sector. Perishable product, rapidly changing demand, early order cut-offs, allergen reporting, variable customer pricing and last-minute amendments are some of the many challenges to be 52 I www.sandwichandfoodtogonews.co.uk
Food industry
specific ordering met these days whatever software you decide to use. Yes, you can tune a generic ordering platform to accommodate the brief, but potentially at considerable cost and complication. And as the industry — or your business — changes, those modifications may no longer be fit for purpose. Back to the drawing board you go... WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES? Chances are you are currently using one of the following solutions to meet your food ordering needs. ERP+ You bought into a large-scale ERP system and customised it for your food ordering needs. It’s a bit clunky and there are things it will not do, but it cost a lot of money and supports a number of different business areas. As a result, operations are modified to
suit what it can and can’t do. The cost and complication of upgrading the ERP is prohibitive. Fax/phone Yes, the technology that served the industry in the mid-1980s is still going strong in your operation. Three decades of supercharged developments in computational technology have elapsed, but your ordering software — insofar as it exists — fails to be as efficient as hiring someone to manually place and amend daily orders. Bespoke software solution You built an ordering system for your business. It was specified as an all-singing, all-dancing fix for your food ordering needs and the CTO flushed with pride to think of the transformational effect it would have on the business. But the debugging was never quite completed and
