Ichiran is a renowned Japanese ramen restaurant specialising in Tonkotsu Ramen (Pork bone noodles). Famous for its signature broth, Ichiran insists on having stringent and professional examination on every pot of broth cooked, from heat control to seasoning ratios, to ensure exceptionally high standards and consistent quality in every bowl of ramen. Since expanding to Hong Kong with three branches in 2013, Ichiran has attracted both local and overseas customers with its extraordinary flavour and dedicated cooking philosophy, making it one of the favourite Japanese ramen restaurants among Hong Kong diners.
As Ichiran maintains extremely high standards for its broth and fresh ingredients, from tonkotsu and their secret sauce to various side dishes to ensure a stable and sufficient supply at each branch during peak hours. Therefore, they pay attention to standardised and systematic day-to-day workflow control, including purchasing and stock control, for maintaining products with guaranteed quality and speed as well as a consistent and excellent dining experience across all branches.
As Ichiran attaches great importance on broth and ingredient quality control, they apply strict requirements for purchase record keeping and report handling. However, they still mainly rely on Excel and manual records to monitor stock across different branches, which often leads to information delays and operational mistakes in purchasing, inventory management and expiry control. As the operation continues to grow in Hong Kong, Ichiran finds the existing Excel-based record-keeping and reporting approach can no longer meet the brand’s management needs such as branch and central supply tracking. It is common for situations like understock or overstock occurs during peak hours as the team is unable to track stock level across each branch in real time. This may lead to ingredient shortages, increased wastage costs and reduced inventory accuracy and reliability.
Working alongside Ichiran, FOODIVAL drives digitalisation through the following key areas:
After implementing FOODIVAL, Ichiran has fully digitised their daily purchasing, good-receiving, stock-out and wastage records across all branches. All data is consolidated and updated automatically in a centralised database with reduced manual handling and reconciliation time.This centralised management approach helps the frontline and management to keep track of ingredient supply in real time which is beneficial for purchasing and production planning.
FOODIVAL enables Ichiran to track costs, usage and expiry dates by item and batch with ease. Through detailed reporting and analysis of each branch’s inventory performance, FOODIVAL also helps management to make more informed and accurate purchasing decisions, resulting in enhanced cost control and overall operational efficiency while preventing stockouts or expiry-related waste.
FOODIVAL helps you take full control and gain complete visibility of your restaurant’s daily operations, from food cost to daily supply chain and stock management.
