Article contributed by Mike Berman, COO, Day & Nite/All Service
Engagious’s consistently insightful and incredibly accurate Back to Normal Barometer has been cited throughout the run of this weekly series. Combining the best of qualitative and quantitative research, Engagious is known for stunningly accurate analysis for some of the world’s most complex, often least understood issues including particularly volatile US political campaigns and elections. In fact, Engagious is world class at what they do and even if foodservice and research seem to be totally unrelated fields, failure to apply meaningful best practices compromises any organization’s profitable growth.
For many, benchmarking and best practices are synonymous— and yet, nothing could be further from the truth or potentially more damaging for mastering a recovery from the wreckage of 2020. While benchmarking certainly has its merits, in practice it only compares business processes and performance metrics within a given industry. Helpful for sure, but the best benchmarking can ever produce is mimicking things someone from your own industry is already doing. Differentiation has been another recurring theme throughout this weekly series; positioning your business for sustained profitable growth is quite unlikely by relying on benchmarking where—at its best—you can proudly claim to be “the best me-too in our field!”. Incorporating best practices, on the other hand, assembles a wealth of global ideas, innovations, concepts from all sectors of the economy.
There are reasons why the US military is now playing a central logistics role for efficiently accelerating distribution of Covid-19 vaccines or why Toyota’s legendary best manufacturing processes are continually studied and adopted by industries far beyond producing vehicles. Learning how market leaders create and hold their competitive advantages, adopting modified versions of these many best practices to fit your business will not only put you on a road to differentiated profitable growth, doing so will actually sharpen your ability to accurately forecast and proactively control future events to best enhance your business and better serve your customers. The Day & Nite family of companies offers a vivid and relevant case use for foodservice.
Incorporating Engagious-like qualitative research best practices, Day & Nite/All Service/Popular Plumbing’s procurement & materials management conducts thorough supplier reviews, receives timely status reports from manufacturers, distributors and transportation providers to best gauge current and 60 day out supply chain velocity. Led by the company’s EVP-Strategic Partnerships, important information pulled from these sessions are then supplemented by regular executive reviews with critical suppliers. Evidence and leading indicators are then introduced to the company’s sophisticated analytics, overseen by the company’s unique Strategy & Standards department, creating quantitative support culminating in unrivaled certainty of immediate execution and forward-looking accuracy.
Total Food Service readers have the benefit of getting summarized access to these deep findings in many of these weekly columns. In particular, as far back as early December, Day & Nite/All Service/Popular Plumbing’s analysis has been flashing warning signals about serious supply chain challenges on the immediate horizon. Perhaps difficult to accept at the exact same time NY and other states were seriously restricting indoor dining, regular readers of this column will now recognize the accuracy of Day & Nite/All Service/Popular Plumbing’s use of these best wide ranging practices in daily operations.
On the very week NY was set to reopen indoor dining, with other states also relaxing restrictions in advance of this past weekend’s Valentine’s Day, it should come as little surprise the Day & Nite family of companies saw a major surge in commercial cooking and refrigeration service call activity. Presumably, all other commercial cooking and refrigeration installation, maintenance and repair companies saw the same. Consider this the first small beginning of a trend that will certainly have major impact on the hospitality industry’s ability to efficiently rebound from a dreadful 2020. Are you leveraging all best practices and available working knowledge to best position your establishment? To get more access to these essential insights, email jbf@wearetheone.com
