The Challenge
A premium catering company operating across NYC, LA, and Miami had zero real-time visibility into alcohol inventory. Manual, infrequent counts became outdated immediately. The result: 8–12 emergency orders monthly at 20–40% premium pricing, 10–15 hours of staff time lost to procurement firefighting, and a growth ceiling that made expansion into new markets impossible to justify.
Our Approach
We built a five-phase custom inventory application: a cloud-based centralized database with location-aware management and role-based access, an event manager interface with real-time reservation and low-stock alerts, a warehouse operations module with mobile cycle-count tools, an analytics dashboard tracking turnover and purchasing patterns by location, and full team training across all three regions.
Outcomes
Rush order incidents dropped from 8–12 monthly to fewer than 1 — a 95%+ reduction
Events affected by shortages fell from ~15% to under 2%
Emergency procurement labor recovered: from 10–15 hours/month to under 1 hour
Conservative annual savings of $43,760–$77,760 from combined rush order, labor, and inventory efficiencies
