Klick Kitchen: Can Your Restaurant Save By Ordering Online?

Last summer I wrote about Klick Kitchen, an internet-based replenishment service for food service businesses.  At the time it struck me as odd that despite all the press Klick Kitchen had been getting, there didn’t seem to be any feedback from real chefs/managers/owners in the field who could substantiate Klick Kitchen’s claim that their service saves restaurants time and money when ordering food product from suppliers.  At $300 to sign up and a $30/month subscription fee, Klick Kitchen just didn’t seem like it could really save a lot of money, time notwithstanding.

Recently Billy Humble of Klick Kitchen contacted me wanting to discuss the new direction the company was taking, and he was gracious enough to spend some time with me on the phone explaining Klick Kitchen’s new approach.

Klick Kitchen is now free for restaurants to sign up and free to use. The company plans to generate revenue through paid featured listings for vendors and optional reporting services for members.

In case you’re unfamiliar with how it works, members who sign up get access to a list of vendors in their area, complete with real-time pricing and contact information.  The site allows users to contact their vendors to order and shop for new vendors very easily.

According to a recent press release quoting Klick Kitchen’s founder and CEO Jordan Glaser, the company can help restaurants because: “Even for chefs who are already ordering online, Klick Kitchen provides a central marketplace where they can order from all their vendors in one place using one system,” explains Glaser.  “With the new 3.0 innovations, chefs can further expedite ordering, reduce errors in the order process, find new products, stay on top of pricing fluctuations and keep well-organized records of their orders.”

Klick Kitchen is currently available for restaurants and vendors in the New York City metro area only, but they do have plans to expand at some point in the future.  The website has about 155 vendors and 60 member restaurants.
With all due respect to Klick Kitchen’s ongoing efforts to streamline the food product replenishment process for restaurants, my original question remains: do chefs and restaurateurs find such a service useful in their day-to-day operations?

Klick Kitchen’s press release features a glowing testimonial from a NYC chef, and I am sure there are other satisfied customers out there.  But how does the food service industry feel as a whole?  The company’s premise is that there isn’t another place to find a comprehensive list of food vendors by product, and that using Klick Kitchen save a lot of time that would otherwise be spent tooling around Yahoo or Google searching for vendors.

While that may be true, how many of you out there see a need for a service like Klick Kitchen?

Leave some feedback below!

About Greg McGuire

Greg has blogged about the food service industry for years and has been published in industry magazines, like Independent Restaurateur and industry blogs like Restaurant SmartBrief. He lives in Colorado with his wife and two sons and enjoys reading, live music, and the great outdoors.

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One comment

  1. Juan R. Martinez

    I would like to know that my vendors are getting the most competive pricing for us in our small town Uvalde Tx. I Hate when vendors raise the product item cost by $5.00 and more. Especially when years ago we would aurgue about 10 cent product increases. I would like a online site with item list with current pricing for the region to compare with the prices we should paying.

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