As the industry continues to settle back in and welcome in-restaurant dining patrons again, it finds a new set of challenges. Near the top of that list is how to maintain and manage the growth in takeout and delivery revenues while working to grow traditional table side dining to pre-pandemic levels.
“The challenge that our founder Daniel Khachab saw was how do we digitize the food chain from farm to fork for operators and vendors/distributors,” said Hilary Kenyon, Choco General Manager-US. “He really came at this from a food waste vantage point and that evolved into the Choco solution. We know that the landscape is very fragmented with so many intermediaries that are touching everything from produce to seafood until it reaches the table at a restaurant or in a home.” The company is going after a $6 trillion food service industry that traditionally does business via spreadsheets or pen and paper. It developed software that digitizes ordering, supply chain and communications for suppliers and restaurants to give back some of that time.
From an operational standpoint, operating two distinctly different businesses requires an infusion of technology to manage it. With that in mind, Choco has burst onto the scene with a platform that manages the complexity of multiple vendor relationships for the world’s restaurants and foodservice operators.
“We act as an aggregator between buyers and suppliers with a goal of streamlining both sides of the market and how buyers buy and sellers sell,” added Kenyon. “Previously restaurateurs typically would be calling a fish online from a seafood distributor, testing a meat guy buying produce on an on-line portal. With Choco they get a single portal to transact with all of their suppliers.”
The Choco app is free for restaurants and enables them to chat and place orders with any supplier in seconds. It eliminates delivery errors, late night waits on the phone and order sheets. Choco simplifies the ordering process for restaurants. It ensures that every order will always have product IDs, units, a delivery date and delivery confirmation. The proof is in choice’s track record of eliminating 85% or order errors.
For many restaurants on the Choco platform, the ease of use has been invaluable. Choco enables operators to breeze through all their supplier orders in one app. Orders can be placed with just three taps and most restaurants on the platform have found they are saving 2 hour plus per week. With the ever increasing cost of labor, Choco enables the operator to redeploy employees from time spent on the mechanics of inventory and ordering into other key aspects of daily operations.
Choco enables restaurateurs to place orders and chat with all of their suppliers in one app. Orders are then converted into a supplier’s format of choice – email, WhatsApp, text, fax, and direct ERP integration. Operators can view and edit all of their order sheets online. Choco eliminates the days of stacks of paper pinned to walls. Products, IDs, units and pars can be added to Choco and organized by category. This enables perfect orders to suppliers with a goal of accurate deliveries.
Choco has been built with an understanding of just how demanding the restaurant professionals issue has become. With that in mind the platform was built to easily track orders for multiple restaurants from the palm of your hand. Choco also features multi-language options and customizable profiles, so that management can share access in real time with their team.
Most importantly, the restaurateur controls the vendors on their Choco dashboard. “We understand how important those relationships that the restaurant has fostered are,” explained the former GrubHub executive. “It really fosters the ability for the distributor sales rep to provide info on a special that is being promoted. It also ensures that what is being ordered is being used to minimize our mission to do our part to eliminate food waste.”
The popularity of Choco for the world’s distributor and vendor community continues to grow in 2022. The platform enables distributors to manage orders, edit catalogs and promote platforms in a single platform. The goal is to enable the distributor to save time, reduce errors and build deeper customer relationships. Choco integrates with your ERP to erase manual order entry forever. This also triggers time savings that cuts costs. Restaurant orders with Choco eliminate all guess work because they come with product IDs and delivery dates.
Keeping your catalog up-to-date is one thing but telling customers about it is another. Managing your catalog online with Choco means product information (units, IDs, availability) is always up-to-date and visible for customers. Distributors can promote special offers and seasonal products by messaging multiple customers at once. Choco even unlocks a new kind of marketing by sending offers straight to customers’ Choco app. 20-30% of products promoted to customers via Choco are purchased.
The Choco platform has given the nation’s distributors a unique solution for communicating with their customer base. “We have the ability for a distributor to let their restaurant customers know that we are running an hour late today, or we are out of stock on Kale and can replace it with a new product,” Kenyon noted. “It’s interesting how this new transparency has created new opportunities. A distributor may very well have a batch of tomatoes with one day of shelf life remaining that, although might not be right for a salad, might make a perfect cost effective base at 75% off for a batch of marinara sauce that needs to be prepped.”
The company also understands that is part or an industry that seeks to be part of a community that can solve something meaningful to the planet. With the fundamental purpose of the company being to make the food supply chain more transparent and sustainable, they carried out 14 months of research on food waste. Choco’s research found that food waste played a leading role in other global problems, causes deforestation and is the third-largest driver of climate change. Choco has emerged as a leader in tackling the food waste issue. “We know that there is something broken in the food supply chain that is creating all of this waste,” Kenyon noted. “It puts farmers and producers under a great amount of price pressure. Our goal was to create a digitizing solution for the whole supply chain. Its even reflected our name: Choco which is one of the most bio-diverse areas in the Amazon rainforest.”
“With the cost of gas and the carbon emissions issue, Choco has been able to eliminate the pesky second run issue that has plagued distributors for decades,” Kenyon continued. “By growing our penetration across the US and eliminating mistakes from distributor/vendor orders, we are able to make a significant impact on eliminating waste. In addition to food and beverage, US restaurateurs are utilizing the Choco platform to manage everything from recycled packaging to tabletop, linens and kitchen equipment.”
Choco also collects data in real time so that suppliers can more accurately balance supply and demand so less food is wasted before it reaches the consumer. Its aim is to “completely digitize the food wholesale market across the globe by 2026 on behalf of zero food waste.” Choco’s goal is to provide the vendor/distributor the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of solutions. “We accompany restaurants and suppliers every step of the way on their personal digitalization journey, Khachab noted. “We’re convinced that the entire industry will go digital by 2026. We believe those suppliers will win who digitize and optimize their operations end-to-end.”
Choco’s premium offering for suppliers focuses on optimizing three keys. “We can drive increased sales by displaying products digitally and targeted marketing to customer,” Kenyon added. “Choco reduces costs by order streamlining and automation via integrations. Most importantly, we can fully digitize the hundreds of customers that a supplier has in just a matter of weeks by with our simple onboarding to the order management platform.”
Choco’s mission is to provide an open platform, with basic order transmission to all suppliers for free. “For suppliers that want to start the digitalization journey step by step, they can for a small fee get listed and create a profile so that existing customers can find and start ordering from them,” Kenyon explained.
Meanwhile, Choco is active in the U.S., Germany, France, Spain, Austria and Belgium, and experienced 350% growth in users over the past year. And as of February 2022, the total value of goods traded through Choco exceeded $1.2 billion, and it is working with around 15,000 restaurant customers and 16,000 on the supply side.
Choco also understands that for those there are new to technology or the platform that there will be questions. With that in mind Choco’s support team offers 24/7 support. In addition, on-boarding can be accomplished in less than 24 hours. “Onboarding is white glove and simple. We want to be an extension of your team and brand,” Kenyon concluded.
Restaurateurs and distributors interested in learning more about how Choco can streamline operations are invited to visit the company’s website. The company will also be on hand in booth #7607 at the upcoming National Restaurant Association Show on May 21st-24th at Chicago’s McCormick Place.
