How a restaurant grew its margins during a global lockdown.

Small and consistent savings across all your distributors means better margins.

Saving $250 every week from one distributor puts $1,250 into your profits at the end of the month. Multiply that across all your distributors, and you could be increasing your GP and adding thousands back into your business. REKKI can help.

REKKI is working with Parlour Kensal to show how our app can help increase margins, even during a lockdown.

Parlour Kensal

5 Regent St., Kensal Green, London NW10 5LG
United Kingdom

All-day restaurant serving up a menu of contemporary British food and craft beers. Open every day 10am - 7pm.

As soon as lockdown started, Parlour Kensal transformed their North West London pub and dining room into “Parlour Market Place,” selling restaurant quality ingredients, cook-at-home meals, and menu favorites for takeaway. This new business model meant taking a closer look at their ordering habits to keep their margins on point. We explored how Parlour used REKKI to survive and thrive.

Parlour was already using REKKI to manage their distributor relationships. They place and track orders and communicate with their distributors daily through the app. When they switched up their business model, they also started using REKKI to find and compare distributors in their area to make sure they were getting the best deal on their orders.

Restaurant Operation

Apr 26 – Jun 7

Apr 26 – May 10

May 17 – Jun 7 (optimization start)

Apr 26 – May 10

May 17 – Jun 7

Starting with their fruit and vegetable costs, Parlour was able to get quotes from two distributors through the app, reducing their average weekly fruit and vegetable GP from 21% to 15.5%. This 5.5% drop equals around $1,250 in savings per week on fruit and veg alone.

Looking at before and after optimizing their food costs, Parlour increased their gross profit margin by around 10% by using REKKI and making other improvements to their business.

On $25K weekly revenue, that's $2,500 in pure profit every week.

If they keep using REKKI to optimize their costs across all their distributors, that profit is the difference between a restaurant fighting to survive and one that's set up to thrive.

Parlour also used REKKI to explore completely new categories and expand their product base as their store grew.

They connected with Atariya, a premium distributor of sushi grade fish, and added high-quality sushi to their takeaway options – selling out from day one.

The setup was a win-win for all parties involved. Here's the breakdown:

the restaurant

Diversified their supply lines and got a fair deal.

the existing distributor

Given a chance to quote for the business and kept supplying Parlour.

the new distributor

Won a valuable new customer through the REKKI platform.

While the restaurant industry looks towards the future, there's so much uncertainty. But there's something restaurants can take control of – food costs and sourcing.

Small changes to your ordering can give you big savings in the long term.

If you're a chef, download REKKI now to see how. If you're a distributor, sign up to the distributor tool to get new customers.