We’re introducing you to our passionate team of experts. Today’s featured Deli crew member is actually an entire team… our Purchasing Team!
About the Team
Much like our Cleaning Crew, our Purchasing Team works mainly behind the scenes, but occasionally you’ll see them at the receiving dock on the East Kingsley side of our building. Though they might be hard to spot, they deserve a moment in the spotlight—the Deli couldn’t run without them!
Led by manager Mark Fate, the team of six is responsible for getting everything the Deli needs, by yes, purchasing products, but that’s a big simplification of what the role requires. The team also does inventory counts, receives the products they’ve ordered (and they also make sure the correct amount comes in), processes invoices into the inventory system, and requests refunds for any products that arrive in sub-optimal shape. Plus, there’s a lot of physical schlepping and they regularly provide great service to anyone and everyone who shows up at the side door, from catering guests to fellow staff members to delivery drivers (making sure the drivers have a beverage on extremely hot or cold days!).
With so many different responsibilities, the job is varied, and changes from moment to moment. As Mark elaborates,
One moment you’re doing heavy lifting and the next you’re checking invoices for the right dollar amount. We’re always balancing our mental and physical energy and working to keep both high. We have to adjust to the flow of the trucks and boxes and budget our time accordingly. It’s very self-directed work with a lot to balance—getting counts done between trucks, doing runs, and processing invoices. It requires us to be great at time management—giving great service to the driver, but checking in the order at the same time, while also watching the clock to put an order in by a certain time that it’s due.
Stock in the Name of Love
The receiving dock is bustling six days a week (Monday through Saturday), but that doesn’t mean Sundays are any slower paced—there are still deliveries by appointment and it’s a big day for placing orders and counting products. On an average day, the Purchasing Team can expect to see anywhere from 8 to 45 trucks delivering products, from delicate French cheeses to nearly 100-pound wheels of Parmesan. And lots of non-cheese products, too, of course—the Deli has 5,000 SKUs, or stock-keeping units!
Products arrive on anything from a semi-truck bringing cases of olive oil to a small Mennonite farmer pulling up in an old pickup truck unloading some produce. Each truck is one invoice, and that’s a lot of things to keep track of—hundreds, in fact! On a daily basis, the team handles 200 to 600 items and places orders with 5 to 8 vendors (each vendor has up to 50 different products). Mark especially loves the variety of vendors the team works with, a number of which are small-batch producers and small-scale farms. Being able to deal with them directly means the Deli has access to a whole range of unique products that we wouldn’t be able to get if we only worked with big distributors.
Baby Buy Buy Buy, Buy Buy
Like so much of what we do at Zingerman’s, it’s a team effort to decide what to buy and how much to buy. For the Deli kitchen, Rodger Bowser and Bill Wallo, along with other cooks, decide what products to purchase and how much gets made. Sandwich ingredients and menu staples, like potato salads and coleslaw, are consistent throughout the year, but quantities vary based on the level of business. As you might expect, a Saturday in January is very different from a home University of Michigan football game day, so the kitchen crew and Mark use historical info and sales forecasts to determine how much food to purchase and make. In some cases, like corned beef, Purchasing makes the final call. For others, like how many strawberries are needed for a salad in the grab-and-go case, the kitchen does. Since we never “86” (restaurant lingo for saying that something is out of stock) menu items, the Purchasing Team has the ultimate responsibility of ensuring we never run out of sandwich ingredients. So if that means a last-minute walk to People’s Food Co-op or a drive to Detroit for an ingredient, they’re doing it. Since the Deli is a multi-faceted business, the Purchasing Team is also having these purchasing discussions with the Catering & Events team, the Specialty Food department, and the Next Door Café.
It’s a lot to balance, so the team is often dealing with challenges that need to be solved and figuring out how to fix them. So it’s no surprise that the team excels at being able to respond positively to folks who need assistance while maintaining a calming presence. It’s actually one of Mark’s favorite parts of the job. As he explains, “It happens all day long. I love being able to help people. It feels good to put out fires and make someone’s day better.” Their positive attitudes, attention to detail*, and knack for time management have transferred to their home life, too. As Mark says, “Purchasing and shopping is a skill! I definitely have a good internal timer for when we need to restock our pantry and knowing how to read an invoice was super helpful when we bought a house.”
Too Good at Good Buys
Of course, those 5,000 SKUs we mentioned aren’t all food items. Purchasing also sources and buys a whole slew of the other stuff for the Deli: plates, bags, compostables, garbage bags, gloves… the list is long! There’s a lot of fluctuation in the prices of those types of items and we buy in huge volumes, so finding a better price on gloves or paper plates can have a big impact on our financial bottom line. This means that the Purchasing Team has the opportunity to help manage costs for the Deli.
The Purchasing Team, Mark especially, has also been instrumental in helping the Deli replace single-use plastics. Mark took on the project with lofty goals of not raising costs or adding additional items to our database. And, alternative options needed to be functional (like not leak) and be just as efficient for employees to handle. After finding sustainable alternatives that checked all of these boxes, Mark created a Bottom-Line Change project (our method for implementing organizational change) so everyone from Deli employees to guests would be in the know about our switch to compostable products and reusable containers. Want to meet more of the folks who help the Deli run?
*This is not to claim that the Purchasing Team is perfect—we all make mistakes! Once, instead of ordering 36 containers of Pimento Cheese, they ordered 36 cases. Luckily everyone loves this spread from Zingerman’s Creamery, so we had no problem selling a pile of pimento.
