notch is an invaluable asset for restaurants working toward a brighter future

Christine Peddie

Larry Heng

8 months ago

If it’s possible for a dessert to symbolize resilience, then Aloette’s sunny Lemon Meringue Pie stands for much more than good taste. On the menu since day one, it’s maintained its popularity through good times — and very, very bad. As the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the restaurant industry, slices of the citrusy sweet made their way into thousands of homes by way of unadorned takeout boxes. Part of the restaurant’s reduced COVID menu, the dessert played a large part in helping the team continue doing what it loves. It helped spark loyalty in new customers and strengthened the restaurant’s connection with devoted regulars. Still, COVID and its lasting effects can’t be overcome with pie alone. One of the hardest hit sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospitality industry is now navigating new realities that make profitability and success harder to achieve than ever.

Today, the effects of closures and lockdowns, the mass exodus of restaurant workers, fewer customers, rising food costs, and other hardships are still taking their toll on the hospitality industry. According to Restaurants Canada, more than “13,000 Canadian foodservice establishments have already permanently closed their doors since March 2020.” In addition, the national, non-profit association reports that 8 out of 10 restaurants have taken on debt due to COVID-19. In its Foodservice Facts 2022 report, Restaurant Canada revealed that “as of June 2022, there were 171,715 job vacancies in the foodservice industry, a threefold increase from pre-pandemic levels.” To make up for the deficit in staff, “72% of restaurant operators [are] increasing hours worked by ownership and management-level staff,” the report states.

Post-pandemic recovery

After the chaos of the past years, restaurants are in all-out recovery mode, looking for ways to maximize efficiencies, save time, and most importantly, save money. For many, notch is proving to be a useful tool toward easing the burden of manual invoicing and streamlining ordering and payments. Hospitality management software, notch is an all-in-one platform designed to bring ordering, invoicing and payments online. It’s software, says CEO Jordan Huck, “that helps restaurants manage the back of the house and better understand their food costs.” Simply put, he adds, “our system allows [restaurants] to organize and manage their relationship with all of the suppliers that provide them with the ingredients that they serve to us.” The end goal? To “make it easier to start, run and succeed at being in hospitality,” says Huck.

A company that “moves in lockstep with the hospitality industry,” notch felt the effects of the pandemic as acutely as its restaurant partners. “During lockdowns we just survived, like everyone else,” admits Huck. Now, as the industry finds its feet, Huck advices that notch is a way for anyone running a restaurant to use technology to make educated decisions, while increasing productivity. It’s also a way to let chefs get back to doing what they love. “Get chefs away from dealing with paper invoices and dealing with administrative work,” says Huck. “Let a machine do that! And let them go back to what they do best.”

notch saves us time and it saves us money.

Sleek and modern, notch is easy to use, and appeals to anyone interested in a clear snapshot of their business’ day-to-day operations. “[notch] gives them visibility into every invoice that comes in the door that could impact the bottom line,” explains Huck. “Using our propriety technology, they’re able to turn all of those paper invoices into digital ones.” By moving stacks of paper to the cloud, notch not only eliminates clutter and saves time, it also creates invaluable data that directly affects a restaurant team’s daily business decisions. Through notch, “chefs can update other systems with how much something costs. They gain visibility into how food costs are trending, compare amongst different suppliers, easily pay suppliers online versus cutting cheques. All of these add up to making it more cost effective to run a restaurant,” adds Huck.

Streamlining systems at Aloette

As the team at Aloette reacquaints itself with the frenetic energy of a full kitchen, and the joyful din of the dining room, it has taken steps to streamline its ordering, says operations manager Quentin Meloff. Prior to notch, “all ordering was done via email and text,” he says. Though the “laissez-faire” system worked, thanks to strong relationships with suppliers, “it was just very hard to track where things were being ordered from and why they were being ordered in certain quantities,” he adds. What notch provides, says Meloff, is “a centralized source, so you know where everything is coming from.”

Beyond the vast improvement to the restaurant’s ordering system, Meloff can also attest to the fact that the relationships forged with suppliers are still holding strong, months after the restaurant started using the software. “We love having that close connection with our suppliers. We like talking to them on a regular basis,” he says. Though the team was initially hesitant to make the switch to notch for fear of losing those bonds, Meloff assures that, “you end up still talking to [your suppliers] quite a bit. You can directly chat to them on the app, as well.” Adds Huck, “we’re not there to get in the middle of the relationship chefs have with their suppliers. We’re there to make that experience easier. To give them time back. We give restaurants a more accessible way to understand those price fluctuations and they appreciate that.”

High volume at Maker Pizza

At Maker Pizza, where more than 35,000 pizzas make their way out of five locations every month, ordering supplies and managing inventory is fundamental to success. “We’re a really high-volume pizza place,” says COO Ophir Toby. “Making sure everything is where it needs to be at the right time, in the right quantities, is challenging at the best of times. It’s become even more challenging ever since COVID.” A place that’s been “a hit,” from day one, Maker Pizza deals in pies, “born out of [executive chef] Matty Matheson’s brain,” that are built from über fresh ingredients. “We basically make everything by hand at Maker. We don’t own a freezer. Everything is fresh. So that requires a supply chain that is planned out well,” explains Toby.

Though COVID “turbocharged our business,” according to Toby, the company has still had to navigate new challenges brought on by the pandemic. Where sourcing products used to be about price, freshness and quality, “you don’t get to get everything you want anymore,” he says. “There are supply chain issues that are wild, that don’t even make any sense,” he adds, citing the baffling increase in the price of a case of lettuce, from $24.99 to $199, “which is insane.”

Saving time and money with notch

At Maker, the team has “to be smart about ordering, managing inventory. It becomes mission critical,” explains Toby. “It was a lot easier to make small mistakes when we were a lower volume place,” but now, on the cusp of opening a 6th and 7th location, including a first branch outside of the downtown core, Maker Pizza is busier than ever. Using notch has made it possible, “to connect to multiple suppliers and it streamlines how we deal with them without actually having to do it face-to-face, or over the phone,” says Toby. “We have a way to connect technologically very quickly to multiple suppliers for multiple locations.” Historically, says Toby, “we’d have to look through a bill, or contact our bookkeeper to figure out exactly what we were paying, to compare prices. It was a lot more tedious.” The paper-based system, also led to “more mistakes, more time, more energy.” Today, notch “puts sourcing and pricing right at the fingertips of decision-makers. …It makes things much simpler and streamlined, for sure.” In essence, “notch saves us time and it saves us money,” affirms Toby.

Meloff agrees, saying simply that he’d ask anyone considering using notch, “how much do you value your time?” A commodity that’s always running short, time is one thing notch maximizes for its restaurant partners. Thanks to time saved, and peace of mind, the minimal fee, “is one of the best things we spend on, on a monthly basis,” assures Meloff.

After years of pivots, reinventions and myriad Hail-Mary schemes, now is the time for attention. It’s a time to run a restaurant the best way possible, with a clear focus on food, service, and efficiency from top to bottom. For Meloff and the team at Aloette, there’s joy in once again seeing dine-in customers dig into torched-to-order slices of tart Lemon Meringue Pie. Though not every restaurant can claim to make one of the city’s most beloved desserts or favourite pizzas, every restaurant can have notch in its post-pandemic recovery kit. Visit notch’s website to learn more about their solution and how you can get started. Seemingly simple, it’s an invaluable asset for restaurants working toward a brighter future.