25 May Just in Time: Virtual Marketplace Connecting Restaurants to Their Favorite Suppliers
As if restaurant operators don’t have enough on their plates, labor shortages have made reliable workers for entry-level positions very hard to find. This means that restaurants need to find creative ways to serve the increasing demand due to the restaurant reopening that has been happening.
To help restaurants deal with this problem precisely, Cheetah has just started a new pilot program called Just in Time (JIT). With JIT, restaurants now have access to an extended inventory of hundreds of high-quality items: fresh-cut produce, trimmed, rinsed, cut, and otherwise processed, saving businesses hours in labor costs. We’re talking about the high-quality products that can be ordered from our vendor partners and delivered directly from the Cheetah app.
Benefits of Working with Fresh Cut and Prepared Foods Suppliers
Boost Productivity and Reduce Labor Costs
Payroll and inventory are the two things that make up any restaurant’s prime cost and can easily total 60% or more of the business expenses. JIT, a ready-to-serve inventory of high-quality fresh-cut items, enables restaurants to cut down on preparation time, saving both prep time and reducing inventory waste.
Rather than having an entire team of prep cooks working long hours to chop and sort things into containers, JIT allows you to order everything ahead, cut and prepped to your specs, leaving cooks to simply grab what they need in a moment and toss it in the pan and you to concentrate on your peak sales periods.
By reducing the need for prep cooks, restaurant operators can nurture a highly qualified lean kitchen staff. Fewer team members are easier to cross-train in related job functions, which translates to increased staff productivity and operating at a higher capacity.
In other words, this not only ensures that you have a workforce who can multitask but also leads to a growth of professional capabilities of the staff and better retention rates.
Improve Your Bottom Line
The best thing about working with a pre-cut wholesale supplier is that it improves your bottom line by letting restaurants make prep time more lean and efficient and save much money on prep cooks.
Pre-cut produce also helps with consistency and yield, regardless of the variables that impact bulk produce throughout the year. Using 100% of the product you purchase means you can plan the number of portions used per bag while keeping waste to a minimum.
In addition, the markings on the package tell you exactly when it was processed, so you always know when it was cut and how long it will last. Never guessing on shelf life helps control rotation and quality. With all this, your restaurant budget and supply become more accurate and easier to plan.
Enhance Food Safety
Pre-cut and food preparation facilities undergo rigorous daily sanitation, safety certifications, and audits.
By working with cut, washed, and bagged produce, you remove any ambiguity of when and where product was handled and the need to use cutting surfaces that may not have been thoroughly cleaned and sanitized. This dramatically reduces the chances of cross-contamination.
New at Cheetah: 2 Suppliers That Save Restaurants Time and Money
Daylight Foods - Fresh Produce from Farm to Restaurants
A great example of a fresh produce supplier that helps restaurants save time, money, and labor is Daylight Foods.
Since 1976, Daylight Foods have been sourcing and delivering quality fresh food from farms to grocers and restaurants around the Bay Area. The company’s 50,000 sq ft warehouse boasts a state-of-the-art processing room with coolers, repack areas, and loading dock, which they use to source fresh cuts of organic and locally grown produce.
Working with Daylight Foods can help save your kitchen prep staff hours of washing, chopping and cutting vegetables, as well as labeling and stocking ingredients on shelves.
Pucci - Bay Area's Favorite Sustainable Wholesale Seafood Supplier
Pucci Foods, a 100-year-old establishment, is a fresh, quality wholesale seafood and specialty meat distributor serving customers all over the Bay Area.
It’s not just that the products are fresh and of the highest quality. It’s that everything you order from Pucci Foods is made to order and based on the specs of your restaurant. This means that whatever you order arrives ready to cook, no time wasted on rinsing, scaling, gutting or filleting fish, peeling and pre-cooking shrimp, or doing any other time-consuming prep work.
Known for its efforts to advance sustainability and for its highest quality product, Pucci Foods is now one of the largest and most trusted seafood and specialty meat suppliers in the Bay Area.
How the Virtual Marketplace Works
Alongside Cheetah’s regular stock, customers will also see products by Daylight Foods and Pucci Foods and place an order via the Cheetah app.
JIT products will be shipped to the Cheetah warehouse and from there to your restaurant. We keep our excellent service and deliver the product one day after it arrives at our fulfillment center.
Want to enjoy all the benefits of working with your favorite suppliers from a single app? Just download the app and browse our JIT Department.
Need a restaurant supplier?
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.