Paul Mizen CEO (right) with Finance Director Kris Clayton (left) and Alex Fisher, Non-Executive Director
We recently met with Paul Mizen, e-foods CEO, to get a better understanding of just what makes the e-foods approach to purchasing so successful. Before we hear from Paul here’s a quick overview of e-foods’ area of expertise.
e-foods works across all hospitality and catering sectors with clients in care, health, education, hotels, restaurants, leisure, contract catering and foodservice. Through its portfolio of over 600 suppliers, e-foods manages over 5000 deliveries to 2000+ sites every week across all food categories. At the centre of e-foods’ solution is an intelligent online system that allows its clients to buy at best value pricing from local, regional and national suppliers at the same, fixed term, low price, irrespective of supplier or location.
Paul, what is it that sparked the beginning of e-foods?
Back in 2004 when we founded e-foods, we knew that, in common with many industries, e-commerce was changing the landscape of the hospitality and catering sectors. There were already buying groups giving businesses access to a wide range of products and pricing structures, however translating this into an online solution required a new approach. To work well, it had to make it simpler for companies to do business. It also needed to be easy to use at kitchen level, yet provide truly useful information for the management and control of purchasing across a complete operation.
Chef Nigel Smith with an ipad showing e-foods online purchasing portal
How does your solution make things easier for your clients?
The route we took was to build a solution that brings all suppliers together onto a single online portal. It allows clients to maintain their ideal supply chain with as many suppliers as they need, yet removes the massive burden of administrating a complex supply chain, effectively making it as simple as working with a single supplier.
What sort of benefits can clients expect from adopting the e-foods solution?
Put simply, everything gets easier and a great example is our work for Shearings Holidays. They have around 55 hotels and we manage the supply of their fresh produce, meat and dairy. Their first win was the savings we secured across their food spend through our buying power, so they now buy at better prices. The second win was the massive reduction in administration – they now process 20,000 fewer invoices a year – the torrent of invoices from suppliers has turned into a handful of consolidated invoices from e-foods. One payment to e-foods pays all their suppliers adding another dramatic saving of time and resource.
One order, one invoice, one payment for all your suppliers
What does it mean for the supply of goods?
The challenge of administering supply for businesses with nationwide multiple locations tends to make single source supply from one of the nationals seem attractive. Don’t get me wrong; we use the nationals too where it makes sense for our clients, but for fresh food in particular, local supply works so much better. Because the consolidation of supply makes things much simpler, it means local supply can be achieved without the admin headache or price penalty. Local supply gives our clients a great story to tell about their food offering, brings benefits to the economies around each location and cuts food miles right down. Without the reliance on a single supplier, supply is more flexible and more robust – local suppliers go the extra distance to keep our clients happy.
Supplier maps provide details of the suppliers to each location
Who are your suppliers?
We work with our clients’ existing suppliers or clients can choose from our large portfolio. Each of our suppliers has to meet clear criteria that ensure our customers’ due diligence requirements are met and supply is traceable and sustainable. Suppliers must be accredited to recognised standards such as BRC, EFSIS, etc. and e-foods monitors every supplier to ensure accreditations are maintained through our partnership with accreditation body STS. Health and safety is critical and we have a dedicated resource in Rob Henry, e-foods’ Quality Assurance & Technical Manager. Rob is certificated to HABC Level 3 in Supervising Food Safety in Catering, Food Allergen Management for Caterers and Effective Auditing & Inspection Skills and is experienced in working with suppliers to meet standards and help clients’ existing unaccredited suppliers achieve audit standards.
Equally important is passion for what they do – by working with e-foods, our suppliers gain access to business opportunities that are normally out of reach to them, consequently our clients get suppliers committed to high service levels. This doesn’t make us complacent, so we also conduct regular spot checks and supplier audits to ensure performance levels continue to meet expectations.
All categories are covered
What products are available?
We have all the major food categories covered. Significantly we have a strong purchasing and procurement team behind our systems. This means we also support our clients with cleaning and hygiene products, waste management, utilities and specialist food categories such as Kosher, or dietary products for dysphagia. Basically, if our clients need a product or service, we source the best deal. Just one example is a recent tea deal that has saved HC-One care home group 17% on their tea bag spend across 250 Homes.
Phone order or online orders all managed by the e-foods system
How flexible is your solution?
We like to think we have the answer for every business scenario. Our solutions are scalable to suite each clients’ business. From a complete online purchase to pay solution that integrates with our clients business systems and allows online ordering, stock control, recipe management, live pricing, budget controls and a full suite of real time reporting tools. To solutions for clients that aren’t ready at site level to use online ordering for whom we support telephone ordering into suppliers. All our suppliers are all integrated into our systems so, even if orders are placed by phone, the order is managed through our systems and still provides all the management information and oversight that keeps purchasing under control.
How much does it cost?
Crucially the systems require no special hardware, just a web browser to access the portal. All e-foods support services are free to use for e-foods clients. e-foods makes its money through a small rebate from the supplier.
What do you need from a potential client?
We’re at our most effective when we partner our clients purchasing activities as a team. We’ll benchmark current pricing, suggest better value alternative products, review things such as pack sizes and all the other factors that make up the true cost of a product. One thing we always remember is to achieve savings without compromising quality or service. To attain this approach requires openness on behalf of our clients with current pricing. Confidentiality is part of the trust a client can be assured of in e-foods. Clients can also expect us to relish a challenge and we’re rarely unable to deliver genuine, sustained and worthwhile savings.
So you’re a one-stop solution?
e-foods blends together four things to create a powerful purchasing resource – buying power, simplification through online systems, supply chain management and procurement expertise. We’re confident that Finance will see dramatic benefits on price and reduced administration. Purchasing will have much improved visibility and control of costs and spend and at an operational level sites will have robust and reliable supply, easy ordering and authentic on the ground support.
H & C News Comment
We were delighted to meet with e-foods and to discover how they work with the hospitality and catering industry to enable them to consistently buy produce at best value pricing from local, regional and national suppliers. Their energy and enthusiasm is apparent and their desire to rise to any challenge presented to them in order that they can work as a team with each client, without compromising quality, value or their own levels of service is highly commendable.
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