Covid Pivot: Modern Italian Kitchen Schedules 500 Deliveries in Five Minutes

September 6, 2021 2 min read

Scaled food deliveries by 11x each week

Planned 500 deliveries in just five minutes

Divided deliveries evenly across 30 employees using Workload Balancing

Realtime Order Tracking boosted customer experience

Mangia e Bevi, a California-based Italian restaurant completely pivoted their business during the coronavirus pandemic. During the shutdown, the restaurant owners and staff redirected all of their efforts to feeding seniors in need through local restaurants. The Italian food restaurant is part of California’s Great Plates Delivered program which allows seniors at high risk from COVID-19 access to warm, healthy, home-cooked food in their dining room – where they might otherwise go without.

Mangia e Bevi Adapted and Grew Their Business With Ease

We spoke to Tore Trupiano, who owns several restaurants in Southern California and is a veteran in the restaurant industry. Once the pandemic hit and the lockdowns started, Tore felt the need to reach out and do something for the community. Along with other business owners and restaurant operators he joined the Great Plates Delivered initiative, which offers high-end foodservice to at risk seniors who have had to start social distancing.

In the beginning, with only 40 delivery orders, the workload wasn’t tough to handle – he and his business partner would complete the food deliveries in an hour. But, as more seniors signed up for the program, the number of orders began to grow exponentially. Within a few short months, they were delivering close to 500 meals a day and hiring 30 additional drivers. Even with extra drivers, there was nothing more efficient about the way they were delivering. They needed help planning the routes. That’s where OptimoRoute came into the picture. It made pivoting to the dramatic market shift easy and scaling seamless.

“You have no idea what a difference it’s made in the way we operate. It’s crazy even though we started with 6 restaurants before the pandemic, we still have 6 during the pandemic. We haven’t lost anything but the way we operate is completely different.”

Routes That Work in Less Than 5 Minutes

Tore says that the software has never failed him and is amazed at how easy it was to use even the first time – it takes him only 5 minutes to plan the routes. Before, planning was a hassle – he had to map out everything manually. OptimoRoute was simple and straightforward, so he felt comfortable delegating the task to 2 of his employees who picked it up right away. They were also able to divide the workload evenly among the drivers so that everyone gets compensated fairly.

“There’s a setting that sets everybody up to have the same amount of deliveries. Now everybody has an even amount of drops and everybody is happy.”

Upon joining the initiative, another hurdle they had to overcome was accounting for the handful of seniors with dietary restrictions. He needed to be sure his drivers knew exactly when the special meals were needed and match these to delivery addresses. OptimoRoute was able to flex to his unique business needs and the customers’ dietary needs were easily met.

Realtime Order Tracking Boosted Customer Experience

Realtime Order Tracking made the process fun, and most importantly Tore’s customers love it.

“The process is similar to an order online. The seniors sign up either via text message or email and they actually know exactly when their food leaves the restaurant, where their driver’s at, and the estimated time of arrival. And that’s just been something that they absolutely love – it gives them a part of their day to look forward to.”

Mangia e Bevi looks forward to reopening and plans on sticking to community outreach post-covid and is looking into a possible extension of the initiative, along with the use of OptimoRoute.

“It’s worked for me, it’s made a difference for me. OptimoRoute is one of those full service companies, that I could say that’s why I sleep well at night” – Tore concluded.