The B2B food supply chain is ready for disruption
The B2B supply chain is tired and in urgent need of a revolution. Thousands of chefs, restaurant owners, catering managers and F&B buyers in the UK are battling every week with deliveries going wrong, quality not meeting the agreed requirements and time-consuming phone calls to multiple producers. In addition to the daily stress, is the frustration of unclear wholesale mark-ups pushing up ingredient prices, as well as missing information about the produce source.
Get me out of this mess…
Technology has already provided some solutions. E-procurement in the food supply chain is not new and restaurants are increasingly getting more and more used to placing their orders through sleek mobile apps. This is definitely an improvement in the efficiency of their order processes but what if the delivery does not arrive on time or the quality of the produce is not consistent? The chef is reliving the same old scenario of patching an order gone wrong like he or she has had to do many times before. “We hear from chefs, restaurateurs and procurement departments that they are fed up with not having real-time pricing, with the wrong goods turning up, not knowing where the goods are coming from or whether they can trust the label. In addition to this, they are snowed under with invoices, statements and credit notes.”, says Jeremy Hibbert-Garibaldi, the founder of Collectiv Food, a new player aiming at revolutionising the food supply chain from the inside.
“On the producer side,” continues Jeremy “we hear complaints about the cost of listing and marketing, which creates a barrier to accessing new markets, and the time they spend on chasing payments and bad debts. Our aim is to sort out all of these problems in one go”.
Jeremy believes the answer to this tired food supply model is a new approach that is inclusive, nimble and transparent, cutting out the middleman and leveraging technology the same way as Deliveroo and Made.com have done in the home delivery sector and the B2C furniture market.
How it works
Food buyers can specify their requirements on a simple platform and be matched up with as many producers as they want, all of which have been vetted by the Collectiv Food team according to pre-set quality standards. The restaurants can rely on the consistency of the produce they receive, while farms can expand the reach of their products and open new business opportunities.
Another aspect of the supply chain that Collectiv Food aims at disrupting is order fulfilment. Traditionally wholesalers handle the operational aspects of delivering the produce from source to outlets, leveraging the lack of facilities at both farms and restaurants. Collectiv Food breaks that dependency thanks to its own delivery and distribution system, which promises to be leaner, more flexible and accessible through the use of technology.
Leading a revolution in food awareness
Collectiv Food is not only changing the day-to-day operations of the marketplace but also helping it face the public opinion’s growing expectations for sustainability and transparency. A researched published in June last year looked at consumer attitudes on the topic of traceability: 65% of respondents said traceability was important to them when buying meat, with 46% expecting retailers to know which farm provided the produce.
With this increased pressure from the consumer front, Collectiv Food’s model of connecting farms with restaurants is the ideal answer for a diversity of businesses. Cocotte, a west London rotisserie whose brand is based on the high-quality chicken imported from France, has seen a direct result of switching their food supply via Collectiv Food. Restaurant owner Romain Bourrillon says: “We have increased our margins by 10–20% while serving better quality food. This has definitely helped us attract more customers and live up to our promise of being a responsible food business.”
Jeremy is confident that Collectiv Food’s approach is the way forward. “Our offering is the future and we believe it will eventually reshape the food supply chain from within. We have the backing of the food producers and the restaurants and I think we have a revolution on our hands,” he says.
Food trends for restaurant professionals
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