It’s not every cafe owner that starts a systems & solutions company… but not every cafe owner was as bothered by their stock going stale as Nigel Grant. He and wife Nuala ran a vintage-style tearoom but their approach to software solutions is anything but vintage. Their business was born from a necessity to keep costs low and produce fresh and with that an influx of attention from contacts in the hospitality industry asking for advice.
Nigel has always been interested in all things tech, starting out in the Agribusiness industry and leading digital eCommerce channel projects, he’s had hands on experience advising and implementing complex solutions to a range of business types.
With this knowledge to hand and while running the café alongside Nuala, Nigel began to curate a basket of powerful management tools to improve how they ran the business. Over time, colleagues within the industry sought Nigel’s assistance and so he found himself in the advisory world, implementing and supporting hospitality businesses in their growth plans. Not long after, his personal passion for business software systems and solutions became a professional endeavour and thus, Back of House was established.
Nigel Grant of Back of House.
Partnering with Unleashed
Becoming a partner with Unleashed was on the cards from the start, according to Nigel. As Back of House customers tend to be within the food industry, product traceability is hugely important and so Unleashed was “chosen due to the way it offers customers a way to control their operations as never before, helping them scale and grow with reliable inventory insights and powerful management tools.”
In particular, the B2B ordering portal that allows businesses to consolidate wholesale clients and their orders, was a game-changer for Nigel’s clients, especially Scúp Gelato.
Working with the highest quality Irish milk and cream, alongside fresh and authentic ingredients like Fresh Wexford Strawberries, Sicilian Bronte Pistachios and Madagascan Vanilla, it’s critical that these ingredients are tracked and traced accurately. Scúp Gelato were managing their business offline, until they spoke to Nigel.
Originally on the hunt for an online ordering app for their customers to place orders, founder Will Devereux and team’s eyes were opened once Nigel began evaluating how their current systems were used and how they would integrate into an app.
Scúp were managing their gelato business with Excel prior to meeting Back of House.
Off spreadsheets, on to cloud food manufacturing software
Scúp were managing their entire business from an excel spreadsheet, from delivery to invoicing through to manually migrating invoices into their accounts package. Particularly with the complexity of managing their manufacturing process, there’s a significant number of details required to be captured – Unleashed has help simplify this and keep accurate records for costings and traceability.
These particular challenges are commonplace in the restaurant industry, according to Nigel. “Chefs are funny creatures of habit, they do their orders when they finish an order so could be at 11pm or 2am in the morning. They would get messages, some via email, via hotel procurement systems, Facebook messages, WhatsApp and even voicemail.” To overcome these challenges, Nigel recommended Unleashed which allowed Scúp to consolidate these orders and run a more cohesive business.
From a business that was run entirely offline with large amounts of inaccuracy, Nigel worked with the team at Scúp to deliver a cohesive onboarding plan in accordance with the customer. Within 4 weeks the first sales orders were going into Unleashed and they now have a clear view of stock, ingredients, cashflow, accounts and most of all traceability of their creamy, smooth and flavoursome gelato.
