Ordermentum, the brainchild of Adam Theobold, Founder of Beat the Q (now known as Hey You), and former Toby’s Estate Managing Director Andrew Low, is helping Australia’s food and beverage industry trade smarter. The B2B web-based ordering and payments platform streamlines a café’s ordering process, saving time and money for both the retailer and the supplier.
When Adam kept hearing from café owners about a need for a platform that took the pain out of ordering and payments, he jumped at the chance to develop the solution.
“There were multiple pain points around ordering for café owners, which led to the idea of building this platform,” Adam says. “I was talking to venues about Beat the Q and they would say to me: ‘It’s great my customers get to use this technology, but who is making my life better?’
“They hated getting phone calls from their suppliers in the middle of service, and opening draws full of invoices they couldn’t manage or collate. They complained about cash on delivery payments when every week they were getting less and less money in their till because of tap-and-go becoming more prominent.”
As the former Managing Director of Toby’s Estate Coffee, Andrew Low has first-hand experience collecting orders and payments from cafés, and the challenges and frustrations it creates.
“At Toby’s Estate I was really proud of my customer service team who called stores for orders. It was very confronting when I actually interviewed my customers who all said the team are fantastic but they didn’t have time to answer the phone. Plus, I was only one of 10 suppliers they use,” Andrew says. “It became very clear that we needed to connect all of the key suppliers for each retailer in one app. They could then do everything in one place but never compromise the relationship with my brand and my customers.”
Ordermentum makes it easy for cafés to order and pay their suppliers on their mobile when it suits them. Cafés are provided with order history, digital invoices, favourite lists, and standing orders, making the ordering process as efficient as possible.
The app also provides cafés with a digital catalogue of every available product from their supplier, allowing them to browse and select the products they want to purchase. Daily reminders ensure venues are ordering before cut-off times on the right days of the week so that they don’t miss out.
“Suppliers no longer have to call their customers in the middle of service or receive a one-way text which is prone to errors of re-keying and pricing mistakes. We really improve that entire transaction,” Andrew says.
Staying in the black
A key issue that the food and beverage industry currently faces, that Andrew says Ordermentum can also help solve, is liquidity, or the ability to manage cashflow.
“For the roaster, they have a big debtor’s balance. It’s a very cash-hungry industry as you buy your green beans months in advance, then you’ve got to roast and sell them. After that, you wait a week or two to get paid,” Andrew says.
He adds cafés could suffer setbacks to their own cashflow, such as rainy days, that impact how soon they can pay suppliers.
“Today, we enable automated payments on credit card or direct debit, but our ultimate payment vision sees us bringing working capital solutions to the market in some capacity to ensure people always have the money to pay their bills on time and don’t face that anxiety of being short for a week,” Adam says.
“To improve invoice management even further, we have just released a feature which allows cafés to sync invoices to their accounting systems. There are a number of things we’ll be doing for cafés over the next six to 12 months, which the team is currently working on. We’ve established a retail team dedicated solely to improving the lives of small business owners in this space and we’re really excited about what that’s going to bring.”
Suppliers Win Too
For roasters, the platform provides features such as roast tallies for the day, pick-up slips, delivery slips, and driver manifests to help the products get delivered. When invoices are due, Ordermentum collects payments via credit card or direct debit and settles cleared funds into the supplier’s bank account with a reconciliation summary marking off each transaction.
Not just satisfied with streamlining transactions, Ordermentum provides a coffee industry first with its insights dashboards. It highlights changes in consumer behaviour, sales performance, and profitability in real time.
“Ordermentum lets suppliers know about unique and specific changes in their customers’ behaviour in real time. This has proved to be a game changer for suppliers and has helped them focus on which customers purchase less weekly, and are at risk of leaving,” Andrew says.
In fact, Adam says the feedback Ordermentum regularly receives from its suppliers is that the app has provided them with a better platform to launch new products and reach new customers.
“We’ve worked hard to create a digital catalogue that the retailer actually likes to use. It does a great job of showing products, and retailers tell us they are finding products they didn’t know existed. The best part is venues are now buying more than they used to over the phone, so we are helping to grow sales,” he says.
Andrew and Adam believe Ordermentum’s focus on win-win scenarios for both roasters and cafés is good for the food and beverage industry as a whole.
“From the very start of the business, we have aimed to create a great experience for retailers that also makes the life of our suppliers better. Serving both stakeholders is important, and the entire industry is better for it,” Adam says.
Andrew and Adam recognise that the food service industry is hard enough without having to worry about paperwork, administration, and cashflow. As such, they have made it Ordermentum’s purpose to help businesses make money and save time.
“Our driving purpose is to improve and celebrate the lives of every person who creates and shares the food and drinks we love,” Andrew says.
This article appears in FULL in the February 2019 edition of BeanScene Magazine. Subscribe here.
For more information, visit www.ordermentum.com
