Track record
How our founders built and led the back office of a UK multi-depot foodservice wholesaler, from five people in 2018 to eleven functions today.
UK foodservice wholesaler, delivery and cash & carry
£70m+ turnover, 1,500 customers a week
Takeaways, restaurants, ethnic trade, caterers, retail
Founding team: built, led and run the back office
This is our founders' own track record, delivered as the leadership team of the business's back office. The business is not named, to protect its confidentiality.
The results
Service levels: cash & carry orders processed in about 5 minutes, delivery orders next day, customer service cases closed within 2 business days.
The starting point
The business took most orders by phone and ran its office on paper and memory. We started with a single order-to-cash desk of five people serving a handful of UK customers.
That desk worked, so the business added the next one, and the next. Today the order-to-cash team alone has 20 agents, and the wider back office runs seven days a week on UK hours.
How it grew
Phone and online order taking, order entry and invoicing.
Queries and complaints, recruitment admin, promotions.
Transport planning, fleet support, purchasing and vendor admin.
Power BI reporting, credit control, bookkeeping.
Eleven functions, multi-region, a distribution centre and cash & carry branches supported.
The hard parts
Challenge
The UK team was used to phone, paper and memory, and wary of new ways of working.
What we did
Changed one process at a time, trained side by side and coordinated in real time until the new way was the easier way.
Challenge
Many takeaway customers, especially in the Turkish trade, order by local product names rather than brand names.
What we did
Built that product knowledge into the order desk and training, so orders were right first time.
Challenge
Customers were used to phoning in and unsure about apps and online ordering.
What we did
Showed each account the time it would save, supported them on WhatsApp until it stuck, and used the freed-up time to win 1,100 new customers.
Wider impact
With orders, service and credit running reliably, the business could expand into new customer segments without adding UK overhead:
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