Notch Brings Simplicity To Restaurants’ Distributor Relationships

For many restaurant operators, B2B commerce has not adapted quickly enough to today’s digital age and the technological advancements that can ease the workload. In addition, businesses naturally worry and stress during the payment process that affects both sides of a transaction: restaurants and distributors. 

In integrating software solutions into their payment and ordering processes, restaurants can now eliminate the challenges of B2B payments. The first all-in-one-software solution to digitize the traditionally paper-driven route of wholesale food and supply ordering is notch. The Toronto, Canada based company strives to simplify the payment and ordering process for both restaurants and distributors. 

This past month, notch partnered with Balance, a top B2B payment processor that provides businesses with the first online checkout. The resulting solution, referred to as “notchPay,” is a payment platform for notch’s customers that allows them to leverage payment processing methods such as wire transfers, checks, or credit cards. Distributors will receive those payments in a short number of days as opposed to the traditional weeks or months that a paper process would take. 

Jordan Huck, CEO of notch, explained  their mission to bring B2B and food commerce online: “When out of ingredients, restaurants reach out to wholesale service supply chains. This may be local or broadline, however, they may be procuring a fragmented supply chain.” Huck grew up working in restaurants and managed the relationships with specialty suppliers by managing orders. With this operation experience in the food industry, Huck quickly came to learn that the experts in the restaurant know best. “There are graveyards of technology companies that think they know the landscape better than a restaurant, but really the restaurant owners and chefs know what is best,” Huck said. “The culture of running a restaurant business is in their blood.” 

Launched just over two and a half years ago, notch has been built by hospitality specialists. Restaurant owners that come to notch’s online marketplace can request catalogs, and explore the online supply chain. 

“We are giving restaurants the power on an iOS app to send notes about products on the invoice in real time,” Huck said. “That stack of paper invoices just accumulates all day, but we help digitize that stack so it is accurate for every invoice for every supplier. We want restaurants to gain a financial partner so we can provide working capital to a restaurant. They can take care of cutting checks to different distributors via our technology product with the click of a button.” 

The company identified the needs of both the distributor and restaurant in the online supply chain process. From a distributor perspective, notch spent a significant amount of time and money to figure out an intensive structure for these specialty products. “We learned from our distributors and helped identify three things we can automate,” Huck explained. “Restaurants no longer need to call buyers and get their credit card info or type in so many orders a day. We automatically pull the money, you click one button, and enter the credit card information once. The integration with that restaurant’s system triggers our product to pull the money that is owned and is deposited directly into your bank account.” With that, the concept of manually handling invoices can be eliminated. Digital invoices are delivered, and weekly statements are automated as well. 

Huck went on to explain that the relationship between distributors and restaurants is about loyalty: “You get the supply chain you’ve invited and cultivated when you onboard with us. The product experience we build we want distributors to embrace. The way we look at it is that we are giving back to the community to deliver lowest possible rates to specialty producers.” 

This levels the playing field so that distributors are gaining the same technology that a broadline supply chain, such as Sysco, may have. When restaurants bring their supply chain online and integrate it into their accounting and POS systems, they can easily pay their distributors and distributors can collect from the restaurant. In addition, the notchPay program seamlessly handles purchase rebates from manufacturers and packers that have become an essential revenue stream for restaurants and foodservice operators. 

When discussing problems within the wholesale process, Huck touched on GPOs. “When major distributors receive orders the data flows to the actual brands that provide the rebate. If they do not live with a GPO model we have a partnership with a major one called Foodbuy, from Compass Group, the largest food service group in America.” While most restaurants are aware of GPO models, notch has them ready if a restaurant is in need of one and helps to onboard this process. 

Huck commented that notch believes that restaurants are not ready to say goodbye to the relationships they have with their representatives. “I think the DSR (Distributor sales rep) will continue to build relationships with chefs. This company took off when everything we thought about when building products was about making things easier to maintain relationships with the distributors.” An example of how notch encourages this is when a restaurant sends an order to their distributor, they can cc their representative. The module notch is building and also allows representatives to enter orders. “We want to increase continuity, not get in the way; we are the technology company that exists to help automate the stressful labor,” Huck concluded.

For restaurants interested in the next steps with notch, visit their website. With pent-up demand in the food industry, notch aims to help operators cut down on manual work so their focus can be on their guests.