ArrowStream Foodservice Blog

For this week’s employee spotlight, we are excited to introduce Jesse Ashcraft. After four years of work in education and marketing, Jesse joined ArrowStream in June of 2018 as a Data Integration Analyst. This summer marks his fourth year with the company.

Today, we bring the spotlight to Charlese Compartore — an ArrowStream Data Mapping Content Analyst with a love of Disney, performing arts, and her daughter Dylan. Charlese has over ten years of experience working in the foodservice industry and has been with ArrowStream for over four years.

Formerly one-dimensional foodservice enterprises are expanding to new ventures in response to recent supply chain bottlenecks and commodity price volatility. Restaurants and grocery stores are expanding their operations to food production, processing, and distribution in order to mitigate reliance on a turbulent and disruptive global market.

We thought Ben and Mike knew so much about the foodservice industry that they should start a podcast, so they did. Introducing The Ben & Mike Show from ArrowStream, an unprecedented podcast providing recent news, industry trends, and practical information on navigating the foodservice industry so you can stay ahead of the curve.

We are honored to present Rebecca Nalepa, one of our Account Managers at ArrowStream. Rebecca joined ArrowStream last July and currently has over 13 years of experience working in account management and client services.

Summer is upon us and with it comes opportunities for restaurants to implement seasonal menu items and limited time offers. Most people associate summer with fruits, vegetables, salads, and chilled drinks, and this makes sense since summer brings soaring temperatures as well as the harvest season for many crops.

Maintaining the safety of food products is paramount to every restaurant business. Food safety issues can not only result in the loss of customers - but they can also be disastrous to the reputation of your brand and may even result in lawsuits.

Steve Glosny is the Senior Director of Software Architecture at ArrowStream. Steve has been with the company for twelve years and possesses over twenty years of experience working in software architecture and development.

A Limited Time Offer, or LTO, is an excellent way to boost business. Celebrating special occasions with temporary menu items, discounts, and promotions is a tried-and-true way to increase revenue and raise brand awareness. LTOs are popular for a reason: they work. Research conducted by Datassential in 2021 showed that 50% of surveyed customers claimed to have ordered an LTO in the past two weeks from the date of the survey. 75% of those customers said they will tell their friends about it, and 65% of them said they would return to the restaurant again to order something else. According to restaurant industry consultant Ryan Gromfin, “LTOs are powerful because of the fear of missing out.” In other words, the limited duration of the promotion or menu item compels customers to visit a restaurant sooner rather than later when it might no longer be available.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket – the same goes for supply chain sourcing.

Sourcing commodities from a variety of locations and suppliers allows your company to mitigate the damage from disruptions and shortages since you have alternative means of procurement. It allows for a resilient flexibility against changing circumstances and the ability to ensure that your company can reliably get the supplies it needs to operate. In the words of the ancient Roman writer Publilius Syrus, “A plan that cannot be altered is a bad plan.”