Fast Casual Executive Summit
Fast casual brands offer tips, best practices for managing the supply chain
The supply chain is a critical aspect of a brand's operations and it needs to scale easily while reducing costs, increasing efficiencies and boosting revenue. Then there's grappling with the unprecedented challenge of COVID-19. It's a tough predicament, but as three fast casual brand leaders shared, survival and growth are possible.
November 2, 2020 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com
As every restaurant worldwide learned this spring, a pandemic can prove nearly disastrous to a brand's supply chain as it can severely limit transportation of goods and sicken millions of workers vital to product distribution and delivery.
Surviving such a challenge is hard, but best practices, strong leadership and the ability to pivot, and pivot fast, can prove invaluable for business survival.
That's exactly what was shared during a panel discussion regarding supply chain issues at the Fast Casual Executive Summit, held virtually Oct. 21 and 22, presented by Networld Media Group.
The panelists included Jason Lee, vice president of supply chain at Cava; Michael Mohammed, CEO of Chronic Tacos and Shayla Partusch, VP of purchasing and retail for Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants. Cherryh Cansler, VP of editorial at Networld, served as moderator for the one-hour talk.
The annual summit, now in its 15th year, draws hundreds of restaurant leaders, executives and experts seeking insight on trends, online learning sessions and an opportunity to network.
The impact of COVID-19
Simply put, the coronavirus has changed everything when it comes to the supply chain. As brands closed doors within weeks of the pandemic's landing in the U.S. in mid-March, staying in business became a literal virtual approach.
"At Dickey's we quickly adjusted marketing from traditional to digital and turned [direction] very quickly, I want to say in days, to how we marketed and the way we drove traffic," said Partusch, who oversees supply chain distribution for every Dickey's location nationwide.
"We became more mobile friendly and that helped changed the dynamic," she added. Her fast casual brand didn't "miss a beat" regarding its supply chain as it moved fast and didn't experience any large hiccups.
A big reason for that is that Dickey's has strong lines of communication with partners and distributors.
"In this crazy time we were sending communications to all of our vendors, at least once a day, with a follow up at the end of the week, to keep a pulse of the brand, and this keeps vendors in the know," said Partusch, who also handles all of the brand's retail products in more than 3,000 grocery stores nationwide.
The brand had launched its e-commerce platform a year earlier, offering direct to customer sales. This year it's launched a meat platform that sells its meats uncooked to consumer. Having that first digital channel in place before COVID proved invaluable, said Partusch, who was named to QSR's Top 15 Young Restaurant Leaders On The Rise this year.
At Cava, one of the country's fastest growing Mediterranean concepts, the brand was also fast to move when the pandemic hit. It "branded" certain products to secure supply and its several months of safety product inventory proved immensely valuable.
"We worked hand in hand with distributors and partners on the supplier level to create a proprietary separate SKU so that way inventory was allocated 100% to our brand," said Lee, a 15-year supply chain leader whose focus for Cava is to optimize and expand current programs for the brand's aggressive growth strategy. "We were pretty successful in most of our items and brought in a few additional suppliers."
Cava launched family meal offers given the stay-at home environment for customers.
"Our culinary and marketing devised brilliant new ideas and that is something we'll be continuing to do for rest of the year. We're going to stay on top of trends and adjust accordingly," said Lee, who previously served as senor director of international supply chain for Five Guys Enterprises. In that role he set up and supported operations spanning across 19 countries.
At Chronic Tacos, Mohammed considered all possible options in pivoting due to COVID-19, but already had a proven take-out and to-go channel working well.
"We've seen increases in digital orders and were already set up on a digital platform, and so accordingly adjusted our menu and introduced items that better represented what was going on," he said.
The brand also created family pack meals and doubled up its focus on its app which launched a few years back. It also worked to streamline the ordering process.
"We had an app [already] so we did several promotions and began offering a contactless experience. In terms of our suppliers, we had to rely on backups, and we are very hands on with our suppliers," said Mohammed, who had led the brand's growth to 60 locations across the U.S., Canada and Japan.
He acknowledged the brand saw some hiccups and ran into substitutions issues as its distributors were caught by surprise with the pandemic.
"Suppliers were replenishing slower so we had to make adjustments and worked with other suppliers, and we're dealing with different distributors in different regions," he said, adding, "I think everyone has had to be nimble during this time."
The brand's back-up supplier strategy, which proved critical with COVID-19, was initiated at the brand's start for both cost effectiveness and efficiency.
"We have approved suppliers and then backups as we don't want stores running to a [supermarket] store given the potential food safety issue," he said.
Supply chain hacks before and after COVID-19
One of the biggest game changers with supply chain management is technology, according to the three brand leaders, who noted how digital ordering and mobile-focused marketing is keeping many a brand from shuttering locations.
"With today's fast paced technology and evolution of real time data, it [tech] has allowed companies to be more proactive," said Lee, adding his brand is using a monitoring device to track trucks as well as truck temperature.
Such tools provide visibility at third-party distribution and the ability to see what they have on hand, what they're delivering to locations and what is in the inbound pipeline.
Technology is allowing Cava store operators to log in overages, shorts, damages and quality issues, and provides direct connectivity to the supplier base as well as the distribution base, all in real time.
"Now we can address issues at hand, and more importantly it gives us, at the corporate level, visibility and data of the issues so we can look at trends and take action."
In the past six months Dickey's has revamped its internal quality control and audit approach and eliminated a third-party aspect. This gives the brand more control and faster insight and also provides faster sharing of information to internal departments.
Another valuable strategy in the past six months has been an inventory control tool the brand uses, said Partusch.
"It's helped us keep a line of sight over everything that is going on at distribution centers. It [the supply chain] starts with having product available and making sure you're not being subbed as that will immediately affect the quality of what's out there [in store locations.]"
Over at Chronic Tacos, a smaller brand, technology is often not within quick reach due to costs, but a strong internal strategy regarding distribution processes has proven critical to surviving the pandemic.
"When we go through the RFP process [for choosing suppliers and distributors] traceability is huge for us, the ability to monitor where everything came from, temperature of trucks, delivery schedules. When you're our size it's important to have a partner that can provide these services and has a good reputation," said Mohammed.
In the last year, the brand has deployed a platform that is helping with inventory management, price monitoring and tracking where changes are happening with product costs.
"This also keeps your distributor honest in terms of pricing as it can fluctuate, so you have to be on top of that. If you're not hands on, that can be a challenge."
The brand also conducts consistent internal audits and store visits — the latter which has proven challenging to do given pandemic travel rules and regulations.
"The platform lets us do auditing virtually with our franchise," he said.
About Judy Mottl
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