Supply network

The supply network lets suppliers and restaurants speak one vocabulary. Suppliers register ingredients, supplies and equipment as a catalogue; restaurants compute their needs from menus and stock; a supply site reads the demand, and its quote returns to the restaurant as a draft purchase order that replenishes stock on receipt.

The supply catalogue

Kind	Categories	Notes
Ingredients	Vegetables, fruit, meat and poultry, seafood, eggs, soy products, staples and grains, nuts, aromatics, seasonings, beverages	Same codes as the ingredient library; allergens and traditional labels come with the ingredient
Supplies	Tableware, kitchenware, cleaning, packaging, disposables, linen, décor
Equipment	Refrigeration, cooking, heating and holding, washing and sanitising, storage, display, prep, smallware

Each entry has a name (multilingual), brand, specification and packaging, unit, minimum order quantity, lead time and price. The public supply catalogue shows no prices; the priced catalogue is in the supplier desk.

From demand to purchase order

1. Publish demandRestaurantThe restaurant switches on “publish supply needs”. Needs are computed from menus, recipes and stock and carry an access token; the switch is off by default.
2. DiscoveryDish libraryOnce a restaurant has registered with the dish library, supply sites can find its demand feed in the directory.
3. QuoteSupplierThe supply site matches the needs to its own catalogue by ingredient code and prepares a quote.
4. Purchase orderRestaurantThe quote returns to the restaurant as a draft purchase order for the restaurant to confirm.
5. ReceiptRestaurantOn receipt, stock is replenished by ingredient code and cost is updated.

Between suppliers

Supply sites can also exchange catalogues: entries for supplies or equipment one supplier lacks can be obtained from a peer. Ingredient entries are merged into the site’s ingredient library together with their traditional labels.