Nomer 14 case study — purchasing out of the group chat
Maksym
owner-operator, Nomer 14
up to 6 hrs
a week freed from re-typing invoices
21–28
deliveries a week in one process
1 hour
of training before a new hire can order
Purchasing lived in chat threads
Before FoodChain, orders went out over messengers and phone calls. The problem was never a missed delivery — it was broken telephone.
We bought the way everyone buys. Staff messaged the section manager, the manager messaged suppliers — different messengers, a call to one, a website order to another. It ate 20–30 minutes every day.
The biggest problem wasn't that something failed to arrive. The biggest problem was broken telephone. An order would get lost in the thread, and when the wrong thing showed up, or showed up late, the investigation started: who wrote what to whom, and when. Then it travelled back down the same chain.
It didn't even annoy the section managers. They considered it their job — although their job is numbers and output, not tracing whose message went missing.
The moment it became clear this could not continue
The supplier contacts walked out with them, along with the order history and any sense of who charged what.
I had to part ways with my managers. All the purchasing landed on me — and it turned out I didn't know who we ordered what from. The whole process was tied to the personal phone of someone who had left.
And this isn't a one-off story. Staff turnover in hospitality is a well-known problem. Handing a new person the knowledge of who to order from, quickly, is simply not possible.
Why FoodChain exists
I drove the idea behind the build. I worked out the product logic myself — starting from what hurt me as an owner — and handed it to the developers. Every early test ran through my team at Nomer 14, and it still does.
The hard part of the rollout wasn't the technology, it was people: convincing the team that this really is easier. So I didn't phase it in — I set the rule that from now on it works this way and no other. Introduce it gradually, alongside the old habits, and you get mistakes. Flipping the switch worked instantly: the team moved over very quickly.
What changed
Deliveries land in Poster automatically
We place 3–4 orders a day, which is 21–28 deliveries a week. Every invoice used to be typed into Poster by hand — around 10 minutes each, plus chasing down discrepancies. That added up to 6 hours a week, effectively a full working day. It's simply gone now.
Ordering is one click
A team member builds the order over the course of the day and sends it to the supplier with a single tap.
The mistakes stopped
Everything is visible, and whoever receives the goods can correct it themselves — no messaging anyone, no chasing anything down.
The owner is out of the process
I no longer take part in ordering, in deliveries, or in working out what has been paid and what hasn't.
Payments became legible
Once goods are received, the supplier's invoice reaches my bank app automatically — that part runs on our Privat24 module, a Ukraine-region add-on. The accountant only has to check it against the delivery note and sign off. Questions get settled directly in a shared chat with the venue, the supplier and the accountant in it. It used to be a chain: supplier, staff member, manager, me, accountant.
We can see what we actually consume
Weekly consumption per product is visible on its own — which lets us correct stock levels and understand real usage.
The process no longer depends on specific people
After an hour of training a new hire can already place tomorrow's order. If someone leaves, we lose neither the process, nor the suppliers, nor the knowledge.
What the team says
It costs the team nothing. They were already checking the delivery note and the goods — they just do it in an app now instead of on paper with a pen. And they've started thinking about the work rather than about pointless busywork.
The suppliers don't mind either way — what matters to them is that the orders keep coming.
Want the same?
We'll walk you through ordering, goods receiving and handing the invoice to Poster on your own data.