Prepare an Order and Negotiate with Your Suppliers [Product Update]

As a restaurant owner, placing orders is a huge part of your job.

You’ve placed hundreds of them over your restaurant’s lifetime.

Maybe even thousands.

But how many of those have been good orders?

If you’re not paying close attention, it’s easy to place an order in minutes.

But slowing it down and placing a smart order – one that will truly save your restaurant cash – can end up costing you a lot of time.

That’s why we’re excited to announce:

You can now prepare an order right inside Orderly.

With this tool, you’ll no longer spend hours trying to organize your spreadsheets.

You won’t be making blind purchases. You’ll always know you’re getting the best deal on the items you need.

If you’re an Orderly customer, this is already up and running in your account. And we’ll walk you through it in just a moment.

If you’re not using Orderly, keep reading and see how it can help you run a smarter business.

The Easiest Order Prep Ever

When preparing an order, you’re used to organized chaos.

You have to go through the tedious process of maintaining your ingredient list. You’ve got to sift through old invoices to update pricing. You’ll need to remember which vendor you ordered what ingredients from.

Needless to say, there’s a lot of room for error.

The Order Prep tool negates all that work. And takes the mistakes with it.

There’s zero maintenance involved on your part and zero configuration.

Everything is updated for you.

And because it’s tied to your spend and budget, it’s actually useful multiple times a week.

All you have to do to keep your numbers right?

Snap photos of your invoices and update your sales.

Preparing an Order

Getting started with the Order Prep tool doesn’t require burying yourself in a pile of spreadsheets. Just reach into your pocket and grab your phone.

Open the Orderly app and tap the Order icon.

You’ll then have the option to look at all of your ingredients, or you can break it down into various categories.

For each ingredient, you’ll see the most recent price paid from each vendor you’ve recently ordered it from.

You don’t have to input any of it yourself. It’s all right there for you.

When you’ve decided on an ingredient, tap the quantity for how much you’d like to order.

Repeat this for everything your kitchen needs.

Once you’ve finished selecting all your ingredients, you’ll be able to tap Review.

The Finishing Touches

On the Review page, the first thing you’ll see is how your order compares to your weekly budget.

… As long as you’ve actually set one in the first place. Which we very highly recommend.

Knowing how much of your budget each order uses is the best way to keep yourself from overspending.

You’ll be able to scan over your order, where you’ll see prices and which vendors you’ve chosen to order from.

You can then send your order right to your inbox, where you can download a clear, concise spreadsheet and put in final touches and tweaks.

This spreadsheet has everything you need: Quantity, last purchase date, prices, codes, descriptions, and more.

You can then send this email or the spreadsheet right to your suppliers.

And you didn’t have to maintain anything on your own.

Take Back Control with a Supplier Review

You’d be surprised as to how often your vendors are taking advantage of you.

And we want to make it easy for you to stop them from doing just that.

So in addition to the Order Prep Tool, Orderly has now made it easier to hold reviews with your suppliers.

Under the “Business Analytics” tab on the web, select “Supplier Review”. You’ll then be able to choose a specific vendor to focus on.

You can choose to review all ingredients, or, if you think a problem is centralized around certain products, you can break it down by category.

Click “Download” and you’re immediately given an organized spreadsheet.

You’ll have your most recent purchase information – prices, dates, quantity, etc. – on all of your chosen ingredients.

You’ll also have the ability to see how your ingredient prices compare to the market prices.

And, most importantly, you’ll finally have an easy way to have a productive negotiation with your vendors.

Saving Time and Money Without Any of the Work

Have questions on how this all works?

We’ve got your back.

Our Customer Success team is happy to help. They can walk you through everything you need to do to start saving more money.

Simply log into your Orderly account to get started.

Not an Orderly customer yet? See it in action on a live demo.

Danny Barry

As Orderly's Content Marketing Manager, Danny is always in the weeds of the restaurant business. He's having conversations. He's scouring the internet for research. He's writing until his fingers start to hurt. And it's all to help you run a smarter restaurant. When he's not writing about restaurants, Danny can be found eating at restaurants. Or, you may find him cheering on his beloved Miami Hurricanes.
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