Introduction
As the No.1 bakery-café concept in the San Francisco Bay area, 22-unit Boudin Bakery was into catering in a big way, offering fresh sandwiches on artisan breads, soups, salads and a great deal more.
Increasing popularity and a manual system brought major challenges for efficient execution.
The organization chose MonkeyMedia Software as the only vendor that could provide a highly customized and automated enterprise-wide operational platform to handle everything from sales and inventory to A/R and reporting.
About Boudin Bakery
Boudin Bakery was established in San Francisco over 160 years ago, and is currently the Bay Area’s oldest continuously running company.
A long lineage of European-trained bakers and a steadfast adherence to tradition have earned Boudin Bakery the reputation as the quintessential purveyor of ‘San Francisco sourdough’.
In fact, Boudin bakers still use a portion of the original 160-year-old mother dough to start each and every new batch.
The Situation
Boudin Bakery is the No. 1 bakery-café concept in the San Francisco Bay Area, having earned a reputation for quality and freshness at reasonable prices.
The company launched its catering program in the 1990s using a manual system that enabled a 10% to 20% increase in sales.
However, the use of a manual system also led to errors in order fulfillment and execution.
(As states by David Wolfgram, Chief Executive Officer of Boudin Bakery’s parent company, Forklift Brands).
Using nothing more than paper and pencils, the catering teams were finding it increasingly difficult to track orders and truly understand how the business was evolving.
When Wolfgram arrived at Boudin Bakery in 2004 – 2005, he went in search of an automated system that could help the catering program continue to grow easily and efficiently.
“Our baking operations and our retail counter sales were well managed using dedicated, professional systems to ensure productivity and efficiency, but our catering business had no equivalent,” Wolfgram said. “We knew we were leaving money on the table.”
Teaming up with MonkeyMedia Software
“Boudin quickly found itself dealing with mounting complexity, and lacking in effective systems to keep track of its new revenue stream. [Monkey's] back-office functionality alone saves us hours of effort each week, easily justifying the investment through constant innovation and expandable, scalable solutions.”
Boudin Bakery was already well acquainted with MonkeyMedia Software on the baking side of the business and had been using the MonkeyBakery™ ERP platform to run its bakeries for several years.
So when Boudin’s catering program was in need of an overhaul, Wolfgram turned once more to the Vancouver, Canada-based catering software provider.
“It was difficult to grow the catering program because we didn’t have the system to grow it,” Wolfgram said. “There was really no other software provider that addressed our back-of-house needs.”
Those needs included the establishment of automated processes for centralized order management, consolidated store-level production management, visibility into order history, inventory, and accounts receivable.
While programming MonkeyCatering around Boudin’s requirements wasn’t easy, being able to manage the chain’s catering business via a web-based platform was a big benefit.
Additionally, there were no additional hardware or software installations, reducing upfront costs as well as long-term maintenance requirements.
“In the end, we came out with a fantastic product,” Wolfgram said. “The entire MonkeyMedia Software team is exceptionally strong, and even as they grow, they continue to invest time in their customers and work really hard to meet their needs.”
Boudin has now been using the MonkeyCatering platform for six years and has a scalable system in place that can handle the chain’s unit growth as well.
“We use MonkeyMedia Software to run an order desk so, as we open new restaurants, we’re able to leverage the (catering platform) infrastructure,” Wolfgram said.
The Results
“Catering sales have grown significantly – a level of success that would have been impossible prior to implementing MonkeyCatering.”
Since putting the MonkeyCatering platform in place, catering sales have increased threefold, Wolfgram said.
The catering team has better tools and information at their disposal, and senior management enjoys greater visibility and control over the business.
“Having the software certainly contributed to our growth in catering sales. The back-office functionality alone saves us hours of effort each week, easily justifying the investment,” Wolfgram said. “We have much more accurate data for our entire catering business, and we’re able to make better decisions about its future growth.”
An additional bonus is that now more than 55% of the company’s catering orders come in online rather than over the phone.
“When the customers are inputting their orders, their order accuracy goes up tremendously,” Wolfgram said. “MonkeyMedia Software has proven its worth as a vendor, and they remain an immensely important partner to our business. I don’t think we would have been able to grow as we have without MonkeyCatering.”
