Essential Logistics Strategies for Kitchen Equipment Suppliers

Commercial kitchen equipment suppliers and manufacturers often experience pressures that come from dynamic changes in customer demands as they try to capitalize on getting products to market. From last-minute changes in delivery requirements to rapidly investigating alternate shipping methods to address capacity constraints, challenges come with taking large volumes to market across thousands of retail locations.

Collaboration, Visibility, and Communication

H&K International, a global supplier of stainless steel kitchen equipment to the foodservice industry, has a reputation for quality products and precision manufacturing. H&K has grown to become a key supplier to McDonald’s and other notable chains, establishing manufacturing operations at strategic global locations. Ensuring customers have the equipment necessary to get restaurants up and running often means transporting shipments within tight time windows and service constraints.

Since 2002, H&K has been working with Pegasus to provide customized solutions for their high-volume, major project rollouts. Pegasus is the winged concierge for all the white glove transportation needs, including a dedicated in-house project manager; end-to-end planning and execution for customer projects; expedited shipments; and more.

“McDonald’s is our largest customer. We custom-fabricate product that needs to be installed at its restaurants on a timely basis,” says Mark Hogan, vice president of logistics, H&K. “Plumbers and electricians have to be on-site to help with installations, so we have to schedule deliveries accordingly. If we don’t, McDonald’s has to pay to have workers wait for shipments to arrive.”

Collaboration, visibility, and communication truly feed the need for speed, given expedited freight’s high value and demand-sensitive nature.

When working within these kinds of delivery specifications, failure isn’t an option. Pegasus works with H&K and its customers to anticipate needs and offer multiple solutions to reduce expedited spend. This effort includes reviewing outbound shipments daily and evaluating carrier cut-off times to ensure that it can move freight by ground expedited instead of air when possible.

The Success Story

This major project rollout had a specific deadline, which was non-negotiable. Failure to execute and meet the deadline given would come with major consequences, including lost market share, reduction in future business, as well as possible chargebacks for failed SLAs.

H&K received the very prestigious “Supplier of the Year” award for a 4th time at McDonald’s customer-supplier appreciation event. The success of this specific rollout was the major driver of the award. By collaborating with and allowing Pegasus to act as a true partner on the logistics side of the business, H&K could really focus on meeting production deadlines. H&K now has a greater market share, increased business, and new opportunities they might not have received otherwise from this award.

Pieces of this blog post originally appeared in an Inbound Logistics article featuring Pegasus Logistics Group.