Automation as a medicine

Lunchtafel has changed its business process. At the beginning of this year the company still delivered fresh lunch products to companies, now it has also opened the way to consumers. With new food concepts. In consultation with automation company ReflexSystems.

In March of this year, Lunchtafel saw its turnover drop by 95%. Companies closed their doors, delivering lunch was no longer necessary. The corona outbreak caused many worries. "But now we are looking to the future positively again. The expression on the face of David Kok, co-owner and the commercial man behind Lunchtafel, changes from worrying to enthusiastic. "It's no fun to see your business falling and to decide to say goodbye to employees who have been working for you from the very beginning. We had to go back to the drawing board in order to survive this period". David's eyes are starting to shine. "The idea of supplying conceptual food boxes to consumers had been in our heads for some time, the corona time has encouraged us to actually get to work on it".

Entrepreneurial adventure

About 12 years ago, David Kok, together with his childhood friend Kevin Sjoerdsma, started to do business. "Working together was always the idea, but we didn't know what yet", says David. "When a business relation was looking for a party that could provide not the simple sandwiches but really healthy lunches at his company, we saw our chance. We started delivering artisan lunches to businesses. Our adventure began. With success. We grew 30% to 40% every year. Until March this year.

Automation as medicine

In the cosy Lunchtafel reception area, David talks about the design of the process that made business change possible. "We had been working with an ERP system for some time, but now we wanted to move on to the consumer market and needed someone who understood that. Soufian Ouald L'Hadj, Managing Director of ReflexSystems, a company that we have been working with for seven years now, immediately understood our wishes". Soufian takes the floor: "In ERP countries, innovation is mainly at the sub-process level. Strategically, we choose to deliver impact on a large scale for our customers. For us, the combination of the corona outbreak and the impact on the food industry means that we prepare customers such as Lunchtafel for a more dynamic future, opening up communication between different systems. We have 700 customers in the food industry. The retail sector remained busy, with corporate canteens, caterers and catering suppliers suffering the blow. It hurts to see your customers struggle. Then ReflexSystems becomes the 'doctor', we invent the medicine by listening carefully and offering solutions".

New Business

David, Kevin and Soufian held serious development talks. David and Kevin indicated what is important to them, such as a look that matches the high-quality products and service to the customers, Soufian teamed up with professionals to find out what they could standardise in the systems.  

Lunchtafel works with Reflex 3000, an ERP hardware and software system with Reflex Internet Order for the business-to-business webshop. This is a different process than for business-to-consumer. It was jointly decided to have a webshop built with an open link to the ERP system, so that the systems can 'talk to each other'. Soufian explains: "We automate the complete process from order to production and order picking. As a result, production based on digital orders can be processed via the business-to-consumer site and automatically delivered to customers". He brought in an expert to set up Shopify for this purpose. In the meantime, according to Soufian, a 'state of the art' coupling mechanism between the ERP (Reflex 3000) and Shopify has been established. As a test case, Lunchtafel has contributed to a successful new product.

New food concepts

"Our company has been redesigned." Full of energy David continues. "The company catering in and around Amsterdam has changed into the conditioned delivery of a lunch box, drinks box and dinner box to companies and consumers in the Benelux. Together with chef Ron Blaauw, we have also developed the 'Restaurant Misunderstanding cooking box' that supports Alzheimer Nederland. Within two weeks more than 500 boxes were sold, followed by larger orders, even one of 6,000 boxes!

Finally, David speaks out: "We are not there yet, but we are looking forward positively. In six months’ time we have built a completely different company, we are ready for the future". Based on this experience, ReflexSystems also sees future opportunities in even more openness between robots, web shops, machines, algorithms and transport. "We bring technology to life," concludes Soufian, " in order for our customers, like David, to see that they can scale up infinitely with ReflexSystems."

www.lunchtafel.nu
www.reflexsystems.nl

Main photo: from left to right: Kevin Sjoerdsma, Soufian Ouald L'Hadj and David Kok
Photos: © Diederik van der Laan