Consequences of Not Consolidating Your Office Kitchen & Pantry Spend

It's undeniable that an office pantry can boost your company's morale, but bringing that to life across multiple offices can be a logistical nightmare for workplace managers. The formula is quite simple:

Office Food & Beverage Program = Happy Employees = Less Burnout = Less Turnover

The hard part is crafting an experience that is unique to each office while streamlined across your company. To do that, you need to know precisely what's on the shelves, what employees are consuming, and when all that is happening. Most companies have ZERO visibility into this information or have it scattered across their inbox, leaving them operating in the dark with hangry teams ready to jump ship.

Whether you're working with the giants of the food service space or haphazardly ordering from big box stores, working with separate vendors across each office can lead to a range of operational and administrative headaches:

Information Overload: A 1,000+ email inbox that you find overwhelming.
Inefficiency: Diverting resources, time, and energy away from business growth.
Inconsistency: Employees feel neglected as offices receive more attention than others.
Lack of Visibility: You have no idea what's happening on the ground at each office.
No Pulse On Budget: Inability to pivot your spending before it's too late.
Employee Feedback: Waste money on products employees leave on the shelves.

Lack of consolidation ultimately impacts the once-elevated office experience, and the one task you previously loved becomes something you avoid at all costs.

This is your sign to simplify and streamline your efforts with a central partner that provides the tools you need to scale a program with reliability. If you're not convinced, read on as we dive into each consequence of not consolidating your food and beverage program. If you find yourself relating to these issues, then start making some moves…over to Crafty, of course!

1. Overwhelming Communication

The Problem: Email overload! It's easy to get overwhelmed by all the communication involved in running a scattered food service program. The coordination efforts in just one office can be a time-consuming nightmare, let alone ten. Orders, deliveries, inventory, merchandising, and any program changes all require extensive communication between your workplace teams, the finance department, and all your vendors. This coordination effort eats into your team's other responsibilities, and they start to feel stretched thin. Hello, burnout!

Crafty Solution: Crafty provides a centralized point of contact for your office's F&B needs. At the high level, there is a dedicated member of the team keeping an eye on your overall program while each office has local teams on the ground to support. The Crafty dashboard is the hub of your operation where your entire team can access the product catalog, consumption reports, operational statuses, and budget tracking in one place.

2. Increased Administrative Work

The Problem: No one, and we repeat, no one gets excited about more paperwork. Dealing with a multitude of vendors only increases your dreaded admin tasks. Each vendor has a separate set of paperwork, invoices, and payment processes. Even if your team is the rockstar of multitasking, this burden diverts precious resources, time, and energy away from other tasks that could drive business growth and innovation. How can your workplace team foster your company's culture when they are too busy trying to gather reports or reconcile receipts from a million different places?

Crafty Solution: Crafty centralizes your invoices and reports all in one intuitive dashboard. This beacon of consolidation streamlines your administrative process. Workplace managers finally have the bandwidth to focus on the business at hand instead of drowning in office snack delivery paperwork. Reports on consumption, budget spending, and operations can be downloaded by anyone on your team within seconds. More importantly, your finance team will sing your praises and simply download one invoice to reconcile. Didn't catch that in the back? ONE invoice for all your office food service programs.

Parks and Rec Gif

3. Lack of Standardization

The Problem: When multiple vendors are involved in your office F&B program, achieving a standardized experience can be an uphill battle. We're not just talking about the product selection but the organization, equipment, and inclusivity. You don't want employees to think that you care more about your employees in one office than the other. Those big box stores aren't going to do anything to solve this problem. They just throw your boxes on your doorstep and bounce!

Crafty Solution: Crafty's expert team collaborates with you to curate the ideal F&B solution for all your office locations. Whether you're focusing on healthy snacks, caffeinated beverages, or satisfying your sweet tooth, Crafty can keep you stocked with exactly what you need when you need it. We aren't just dropping things off; we are getting it all on the shelves in a style worthy of your Pinterest board. This approach ensures a consistent employee experience in terms of snack variety, display aesthetics, and equipment quality across all offices.

Crafty's dedication to uniformity enhances employee satisfaction and reinforces a cohesive company culture by creating an inviting space for employees to gather and share a snack or meal. In fact, research from both Harvard Business Review and Cornell University shows that eating at workwith other officemates improves employee morale and productivity.

4. Zero Visibility Into Operations

The Problem: When you deal with multiple vendors, you're operating in the dark. There's no comprehensive way to see what's happening on the ground at each office or with each vendor unless you reach out to everyone separately. Are you really up for that game of phone tag and spending weeks trying to get a comprehensive idea of what's going on? The big box stores are no better because you're bombarded with a zillion emails, texts, and status updates. And again, they aren't doing anything more than dropping the stuff off for you to do all the hard work.

Crafty Solution: Crafty's dashboard offers unparalleled transparency into the operations of each office. It provides daily updates on schedules, task lists, task statuses, and even images to confirm that tasks were completed visually. Unlike the big box stores, this isn't a picture of a box for you to unpack. It's a picture of a fully restocked fridge or office snack station. This feature empowers workplace managers with the tools to oversee operations to ensure their employees are taken care of.

5. Hard To Keep A Pulse On Budget Spending

The Problem: Let's be honest; every dollar counts when running a business, so knowing where your money is going matters. One of the most significant financial consequences of not consolidating F&B spend is difficulty tracking and managing budgets across locations.

Offsetting daily costs is vital to retaining top talent in the workplace. Your rockstar team needs fuel for their workday, and having a stocked office kitchen can help them keep more than $1,750 in their wallets each year — a perk that definitely won't go unnoticed. Keeping your people happy is key, but the absence of a unified system can lead to overspending and even prevent timely adjustments that could solve spending woes before it's too late.

Crafty Solution: To keep your budget on track, Crafty delivers a one-two punch in budgeting perfection:

We keep our tech tight. Our innovative dashboard offers daily insights into budget spending. These daily insights let you see your budget use from day one. So, when you're cutting it close to your budget two weeks into the month, our tech signals the Crafty team to adjust things accordingly and keep your spending on track.
Our people know how to pivot. The Crafty team executes adjustments with ease. When you're closing in on your budget, the client contact and our on-the-ground team can recommend adjustments and merchandising tactics, like not putting all your inventory front and center so there are some reserves. Then, they might recommend swapping for a cheaper product on your next order to keep your budget on track.

Live footage of running a food service program without Crafty:

6. Missed Cost-Saving & Trend Opportunities

The Problem: The lack of visibility into consumption patterns makes it challenging to identify cost-saving opportunities and trends. You miss opportunities to optimize spending and enhance your employee experience when you don't have a pulse on your inventory and consumption. Do you want to know who isn't tracking your inventory? Everyone else!

Crafty Solution: The Crafty dashboard gives you a front-row seat to your inventory and consumption data across every office. Check out your employees' favorites, what they leave on the shelves, and how quickly your inventory is consumed. You can also set inventory thresholds in each office, and as our team takes inventory, our automated inventory tool will ensure you always have a backup of your favorites. In a 2022 Sharebite survey, 47% of respondents said that variety and a rotation of options are the most important to them in a food service program. So, keeping a fresh selection of food and beverages can help keep everyone in the office happy. Optimizing your inventory is a breeze with the Crafty dashboard at your fingertips. Your people will be fueled and satisfied, all within your budget.

Why Crafty Is The Ideal Solution for Consolidated F&B Spend

In the world of food service, office snack delivery, and beyond, Crafty is the ideal solution for companies who want to streamline their F&B program — which, as evidenced by the consequences above, should really be for every company. Crafty's comprehensive suite of tools and services can alleviate all of your office's F&B pain points.

In today's economy, operational efficiency and employee satisfaction are paramount. That's why Crafty empowers companies to create a seamless and consistent F&B program across all offices. With Crafty as your snacking sidekick, you can optimize your resources, prioritize strategic initiatives, and foster a workplace experience that truly values and supports its employees.

The Consequences of Not Consolidating Your Office Kitchen & Pantry Spend