If you’re in the QSR business, you’re no stranger to the daily grind of managing orders, ensuring prompt deliveries, and keeping customers satisfied amidst the whirlwind of activity. A survey conducted in August 2022 found that approximately 38 percent of global consumers expected their online food orders to be delivered within 21 to 30 minutes.
In such a fast-paced and competitive environment, every second counts, every decision can make a significant impact on the bottom line and timely deliveries are crucial to success.
One effective approach to consider when it comes to meeting customer demand is the First In, First Out (FIFO) method. Typically used in inventory management, FIFO also applies to order assignment and delivery.
In this blog, we will discuss the advantages of using FIFO in QSR delivery management, and explore how your restaurant can streamline order fulfillment and delivery processes.
Understanding FIFO in the context of QSR
First In, First Out, or FIFO, is an order fulfillment and inventory management strategy that operates on serving the oldest food items, often created earlier and in storage for a longer time, first. For QSRs, First-In, First-Out (FIFO) ensures that customers receive freshly prepared food quickly while minimizing waste and maximizing quality, always ensuring a great customer experience.
There are several reasons your restaurant should choose to prioritize your order based on FIFO principles. By implementing FIFO in your QSR chain, you will notice these benefits:
Freshness Guarantee: FIFO ensures that the perishable goods are delivered to customers promptly, maintaining their freshness and quality and ensuring customer satisfaction.
Waste Reduction: By minimizing the risk of expired or obsolete inventory, FIFO helps you reduce waste and maximize resource utilization.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlining the delivery process by organizing orders based on production time enables your restaurant to fulfil faster deliveries.
Quality Control: With FIFO, you can maintain consistency in product quality, ensuring that every order meets your brand’s standards.
Optimized Inventory Usage: By prioritizing the oldest inventory for delivery, you can reduce the risk of stockouts and minimize inventory holding costs.
Improved Customer Demand Forecasting: FIFO enhances demand forecasting by tracking item entry and exit dates. This enables you to replenish your stock efficiently.
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: Timely delivery of products leads to higher customer satisfaction and repeat business, ultimately driving growth and revenue for your business.
The Importance of Trigger Time/Planned Start Time in FIFO
FIFO can optimize your delivery operations and enhance customer experience by focusing on trigger times or planned start times.
“Trigger time” in FIFO is crucial for ensuring that food items made first are delivered first, maintaining their freshness. Delivering food that is delayed and cold often leads to dissatisfied customers impeding the customer experience you aim to deliver. By implementing FIFO in your delivery operations you can maintain freshness of the food, reduce waste, and comply with safety standards. Factors such as shelf life, expiration time, storage duration, and inventory levels determine the trigger time and serve as the foundation for FIFO-based order and delivery management.
An automated delivery process creates a timestamp when an order is placed and ready to be processed and delivered. Your restaurants can prioritize orders accurately by following FIFO principles to maintain quality and efficiency in order fulfillment resulting in a great customer experience.
Advantages of FIFO in Order Assignment
QSR chains face several challenges, particularly due to manual delivery assignments, especially delayed deliveries caused by manual driver and route allocation. These issues increase the risk of food spoilage and waste due to inaccurate temperature control and delayed dispatch. Implementing FIFO in delivery management offers numerous benefits for your restaurant business.
Fairness and Transparency: FIFO ensures equitable treatment of orders by prioritizing them based on their arrival time. This transparency fosters trust among customers and promotes a sense of fairness in the order fulfillment process.
Reduced Processing Time: By adhering to FIFO, your restaurants can efficiently organize order assignment workflows, minimizing the time spent on decision-making and prioritization. This reduction in processing time contributes to faster order turnaround and improved customer satisfaction.
Optimized Resource Allocation: FIFO allows for the efficient allocation of your resources, ensuring that available capacity is utilized effectively. By tackling orders in the order of their arrival, your restaurants and food chains can allocate resources judiciously, avoiding bottlenecks and optimizing operational efficiency.
Without implementing a FIFO method in delivery operations, prioritizing older orders will be compromised, resulting in various operational lapses.
Implementing FIFO in Order Delivery
Automating your food delivery based on FIFO can help you optimize the delivery operations of your QSR business in numerous ways:
Sequencing Deliveries: The FIFO principles can help your restaurant navigate through the sequencing of deliveries, ensuring that orders are dispatched in the order they were processed. This systematic automated order prioritization feature minimizes food delivery lead times and enhances the overall order delivery experience for customers.
Real-Time Inventory Tracking & Monitoring: Leveraging cutting-edge technology for real-time monitoring of order status and delivery progress can enable your restaurant and food chain to maintain visibility into inventory levels throughout the fulfillment process. This capability enables your restaurant to handle stock rotation and order delivery operations efficiently.
Dynamic Routing Optimization: This feature maximizes efficiency by leveraging advanced algorithms and real-time data to optimize your delivery routes. It ensures swift delivery while maintaining product freshness by considering factors like traffic conditions and order priorities.
Continuous Improvement: Through consistent analysis of your order fulfillment metrics and incorporating feedback from your customers, you can enable continuous improvements to your operational process. By fine-tuning your processes and streamlining your workflows based on FIFO principles, you can elevate your delivery proficiency, thus exceeding customer expectations.
Data-driven Insightful Reporting: Technology powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence helps analyze big data sets and generate detailed reports on usage trends, helping you make data-driven decisions. There are just a few solutions equipped with an intelligent analytics dashboard to provide you with valuable insights into your delivery performance and make informed decisions about your menu offerings, promotions, and pricing strategies to drive continuous improvement.
Key takeaways:
Mastering delivery management empowers your QSR to dive into the world of quick deliveries. The FIFO method is essential for optimizing your assignment and delivery workflows. By prioritizing your orders based on trigger time or planned start time, your restaurants and food chains can uphold fairness, streamline operations, and elevate the overall customer experience. Implementing Lyve Delivery Management, integrated with the FIFO principles, can empower your restaurant with agility and efficiency, positioning your business for sustained success in today’s competitive marketplace.
