The Key to Saving Time

Great ideas are usually simple ideas. Like me, you might have wondered why this is the case, so I’d like to share my experience in implementing a simple change that had a big impact.

I work as a team supervisor at Sodexo Live!, a global catering corporation that provides food & beverages to live entertainment events,? sports, and other venues across the US. I’m employed by the branch based at the Indianapolis Zoo which is serving more than 1 million guests every year.?

The Covid-19 Pandemic hit our business really hard with staff product shortages, inadequately spread peaks in demand, and other major supply chain and customer issues amidst lockdowns and a bumpy economy.? We even got to a stage when we were operating without any workers at the warehouse. But business always has to carry on!

The warehouse wasn't my area of responsibility, but I often helped there, so I was familiar with everything, and I took over when the need came. This included responsibility not only for the ice cream carts outside but also for ensuring that the cafes were operating too meaning product delivery amongst my responsibilities.? I managed it all smoothly, apart from the bread deliveries from our supplier Turano from Chicago who was providing us with bread for hot dogs, burgers, and so on in plastic crates. You could imagine how many of these crates a busy place like the Zoo might need per week given that we feed more than a million guests in 10 months (open from March to December).?

It wasn’t just the sheer volume, we also had some major drawbacks to overcome.? These crates are heavy, making them hard to load and unload. They are also quite bulky and take a lot of room in a van or a truck. Dealing with them is a very time and resource-consuming process.

Everything was going well, with? 2 or 3 deliveries per week directly to the cafe, however, Turano suddenly started to deliver them to our warehouse, located at quite a distance from the cafe. When I asked our sous chef what the problem was, she explained that they deliver very early in the morning before anyone’s in and without access to the gate are unable to make the drop-off. Straight away I asked why we couldn’t just give them a key but the response was that management was unlikely to approve of the idea even though this was precisely what we needed.?

For the next couple of days, I couldn’t stop thinking about how to make it work until the opportunity to implement it came by itself at around 6 pm on a Friday. The executive chef and I were at the warehouse to restock the cafes with products when we discovered that the bread was there too. Even though we managed to finally load the crates in the already full van, it left us exhausted and frustrated. I used the opportunity to suggest my idea about providing a key for Turano, so they can deliver the bread directly to the main cafe. No surprise that after such a long and hard day, the chef loved the idea.?

The next day I was ready to go ahead and make it happen but when I informed my manager that I needed an extra key for the gates, his answer was a resounding ‘No!’.? Giving Turano a key would be against safety and security regulations as it would give them access to the entire Zoo, coolers, cafes, and other areas. I wasn’t deterred by this setback and so I discussed it again with the GM and managed to convince him that we can make a separate lock and key just for the gate, so Turano will not have access to any other areas. After approval, all that I had to do was go to the security officers and request a lock and key different from our regular locks including a special badge for Turano.?

This was literally ‘the key’ to resolving the problem and once we gave them access and did a quick security briefing Turano started to deliver the bread straight to the café. This was a great relief for me and everyone working at the warehouse. I calculated that this small change has saved us more than 200 labor hours or $2500 per year. Even though this is a? tiny amount for a corporation that earned $22 billion in revenue in 2021, I still believe that big earnings come from small savings.? And what’s even more important, saving time and taking away meaningless tasks from people who work at the warehouse, makes a huge difference to their levels of job satisfaction and motivation.