A recent Wall Street Journal survey examined the top 5,500 publicly traded companies purely on ESG metrics. Shockingly, only one food brand (Nestle) scored in the Top 100. This is especially concerning since the food industry accounts for 70% of global fresh-water withdrawal and nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. As an industry, we must do better!
One essential activity for restaurants is to boost transparency around their supply chains so they can determine which suppliers are following proper safety protocols and committed to strong ESG practices.
Historically, this was difficult to do. Many restaurants tried to manually manage their suppliers’ paperwork and certifications, but that was tedious, time-consuming, error-prone, and labor intensive. It’s nearly impossible to manually collect, organize, assess, update, and review piles of certifications from all your vendors, and keep track of important deadlines.
In the past, software solutions were expensive, complicated, and difficult to operate. They came with long sales cycles and required extensive training. Their high price points meant that only huge companies with limitless budgets could afford to use them. While they were technically a step up from manual systems, they were unaffordable and unfeasible for most restaurant brands.
Luckily, things have changed.
Today’s easy, affordable, accessible solutions
Now, many restaurant brands are using innovative tools to organize supplier certifications into a system they can see and manage. This way, they can make more informed decisions about which suppliers to work with – and which to avoid.
Today’s game-changing software tools are disrupting traditional market software. They:
- Make it easy and affordable for organizations of all sizes to use.
- Allow restaurant brands to easily, quickly, and accurately use these solutions to gather, organize, and manage supplier documentation and information in a centralized location.
- Track supplier safety certifications and see which suppliers are committed to strong ESG goals and practices.
- Are user-friendly, accessible, and cost-effective, finally making it possible for the “smaller guys” to compete with giant corporations.
Are your suppliers committed to ESG efforts?
Increasingly, restaurants are prioritizing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives. That means more restaurants are reducing their environmental impact, prioritizing sustainability, committing to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, and buying responsibly sourced products.
As part of their efforts, restaurants are examining their supply chains, opting to work with suppliers whose ESG values mirror their own.
How can brands boost transparency through every step of their supply chains? How can they determine whether their suppliers are properly certified – in terms of both safety protocols and ESG efforts? The answer is simple: they need to better manage their suppliers’ certification status.
Today’s software tools make it simple to gather, organize, and manage supplier documentation and information in a centralized location, track which suppliers are committed to strong safety and ESG practices, check status and deadlines, ensure compliance, and reduce time-consuming administrative tasks.
The latest tech tools allow restaurants to:
- Track suppliers all along their supply chain and determine whether they have proper safety and ESG certifications.
- Learn more about where their suppliers source their raw materials, how they’re being processed, and what practices they follow.
- Decide which suppliers to work with based on their certification status.
- See task and certification status for all suppliers or drill down to view by supplier, location, or material.
- Manage numerous vendors, certifications, and deadlines in an easy, accurate, cost-effective manner.
- Streamline processes to save time, and reduce redundancies, errors, and data entry for a more efficient, accurate experience.
- Implement easily and be up and running in minutes, with no onboarding or training required.
Why is this important?
Restaurants need to elevate and amplify their ESG efforts. As part of this initiative, they must determine whether their suppliers are practicing proper safety protocols and supporting ESG goals. This is important because:
- Companies need to know where their food is coming from, if it’s safe, and if it meets the latest ESG guidelines.
- If you don’t build and manage a meaningful supplier program, it puts your organization at risk.
- Without a user-friendly digital system, restaurants can’t properly identify inefficient, unreliable, unsafe suppliers, which can be costly in terms of money, time, and your restaurant’s reputation.
- Investors, regulators, and consumers are increasingly demanding sustainable organizations, practices, and products.
There’s no denying that the restaurant industry has had a few difficult years. We’ve been focused on self-survival while navigating a global pandemic, implementing a new set of safety protocols, and adapting to new consumer demands. But now that the worst of this crisis is (hopefully) in the rearview mirror, restaurant leadership needs to intensify their ESG efforts.
As an industry, we must address environmental issues like soil degradation, water and energy waste, the use of harmful pesticides, climate change, and deforestation. We should also prioritize ESG issues like racial and gender equality, DEI, sustainable business practices, and fair trade. Our leaders must step up to be part of the solution. Doing so has many benefits: positively impacting restaurants’ bottom-lines, attracting new customers, employees, and investors, and helping the planet. It’s also, clearly, the right thing to do.
As President of RizePoint, the longest-lasting quality management vendor in the marketplace, Kari Hensien has been instrumental in launching the company’s Ignite Supplier Certification Management solution and adding new features to make the platform even more valuable. Ignite allows companies to gather, organize, and manage supplier documentation and information in a centralized location, track status and deadlines, ensure compliance, and reduce time-consuming administrative tasks. Ignite leverages the latest tech stacks in cloud computing to deliver better speed of service, security, and performance, with shortened development cycles. For more information or to discuss RizePoint’s solutions, please contact Kari at kari.hensien@rizepoint.com.
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