Case study: JD Wetherspoon

Giving your suppliers visibility of your stock

Written by Joe Devo

“It needs to be seamless and quick, so point-of-order to point-of-delivery needs to be rapid, and it also needs to be as automated as it possibly can.”

This, says chief operating officer Paul Harbottle at JD Wetherspoon, is the recipe for the sort of supply chain his business needs.

To some extent, the company has ensured it delivers for itself, having invested heavily in a distribution facility in Daventry, opened in July 2004.

“We’ve seen a big benefit for JD Wetherspoon because the warehouse has allowed us to take a lot of costs out of the supply chain,” says Harbottle. “Where we used to use retailers, we now go direct to suppliers.”

The distribution centre means that the meal you eat in a JD Wetherspoon pub will have been produced from ingredients that arrived in the Daventry facility yesterday and shipped out overnight to one of the company’s 670 pubs around the UK.

The bottle of Californian Zinfandel to accompany your food has followed a different supply path, however, with the same facility offering sufficient storage capacity to hold a month’s worth of wine from overseas.

The distribution centre is underpinned by a warehouse management system from Chess Logistics and offers integration with a couple of the more select providers from the 250 that service the pub chain’s Daventry needs.

“We have one or two suppliers who have visibility of our systems, although we don’t have any visibility of theirs,” says Harbottle.

“Therefore, they can see the demand that’s come through from pubs and they can see our stock-holding at Daventry. We’ve taken some costs out of the supply chain by allowing them to just replenish the stockholding, which at Daventry is effectively theirs and only transfers on to our books when it goes out. We give them a portal which allows them to see our stocks via the web.”

Harbottle would like to see this broadened to two-way visibility, but recognises that while the supply chain was prioritised by the business three years ago, its moment back in the limelight appears some way off.

“I would like to see more progress, but we made such a big change and saw such a dramatic improvement in our supply chain three years ago when we put the centre in place, that other things in the business have taken priority now as they offer bigger wins,” he says. “The pub industry as a whole has much more pressing issues around things like non-smoking and licensing hours.”

Wetherspoon’s supply chain ambitions are further stymied by the distinctly low-tech nature of its electronic point of sale (Epos) systems, contrasting sharply with the Daventry operation.

“It is not linked to our Epos system, so we can’t see sales,” says Harbottle. “That should be and would be our next step if our pub system was sophisticated enough to be able to do it.

“We have a fairly obsolete Epos system at the pub level, which was built around just selling things over the bar and not placing things at the other end. So our demand forecasting is all done at Daventry, based on historical sales, known future events and a sales overlay that we put in on top of that.”

But with the company set to add a further 30 to 35 pubs in the coming year and turnover now topping £900m, it is perhaps entitled to prioritise ways of keeping the smoking community in the general vicinity of its premises.

  • Have your say
  • Send to a friend
  • Print this
  • Share

reader comments

related articles

Picture of shelf filling

Taking stock of business

As consumers become increasingly demanding, perfecting your supply chain is vital 18 Oct 2007

 

Eliminating the weakest link

Strong supply chain management is not just about controlling external suppliers 18 Oct 2007

Case study: WE International

Investing in planning and replenishment 18 Oct 2007

Think tank: Pubs need less tax and regulation

Think tank warns government about tax and regulation concerns for pubs 31 Mar 2009

related whitepapers

today's top stories

Telepresence: coming to a screen near you?

Telepresence systems enable organisations to hold boardroom-style meetings with far-flung participants without the hassle and expense of arranging travel and accommodation. But while the technology is impressive, it does not come cheap, as Martin Courtney discovered when he sat in on a virtual meeting with executives from Philips 10 Mar 2010

Users give their verdict on Azure

Some of the first wave of UK adopters met in London recently to air their views on Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. Dave Bailey listened in 10 Mar 2010

Protests greet new Digital Economy Bill amendment

ISPs, digital rights groups and Liberal Democrat supporters cry foul 05 Mar 2010

Publishing special - Publishers innovate to survive

1) IT could hold the key to the future of publishing 2) Case Study: The Guardian harnesses social and mobile apps 3) How publishers are reacting to the iPad 02 Mar 2010

IT Leaders' Forum in association with IBM

A unique opportunity to hear from expert speakers and engage in a debate about the future of the CIO job function 29 Jan 2010

Advertisement

Keys to successful Service‐Oriented Architecture implementation

This white paper explores best practices and general design patterns for service oriented architecture (SOA).

The Roadmap to IT Maturity — Matching Strategy to Infrastructure for Business Success

This paper defines a roadmap for matching infrastructure strategy to business success.

Advertisement

Keep up to date with the latest products, services and technologies from the world's leading IT companies; ITHound.com brings you over 6,000 white papers, case studies and analyst reports.

Advertisement

Newsletter signup

Sign up for our range of FREE newsletters:

More available - click 'submit' to view

Existing User

Newsletter user login:

Jobs

Related jobs

Job of the week

Job alerts

Sign up here

Find your next job

IT Salary Checker

Check salary here

Advertisement

Latest poll

NHS centralised data

NHS centralised data

Do you think the NHS can be trusted to safely look after personal data electronically?

View poll results

Latest audio and video articles

Video

HP unveils S Series notebooks

'Prosumer' line overhauled 01 Mar 2010

Web Seminar Listings

Preparing for enterprise-scale Windows 7 migration

The web seminar on 18 Feb will discuss how Windows 7 migration can increase IT efficiency in large enterprises, freeing up budgetary and personnel resources to focus on business innovation. Our panel of experts will examine the strategies, tools and services IT leaders can use to migrate successfully and reap the rewards of increased efficiency. 19 Feb 2010

Latest in-depth articles

Martin CaveComment

Lessons to be learned from cricket's internet outing

Imagine the scene. It’s the final of one of the most popular sporting events in the Indian subcontinent and millions of people are glued to their laptops and PCs in anticipation of the four runs required off the last ball of the match. Suddenly the connection jitters and 20 seconds later you see the jubilant crowd flooding onto the field of play… 12 Mar 2010

Wayne GibbonsComment

Social networks are key to cracking China

Business social media can unlock the door to the world’s second-largest economy 10 Mar 2010

Primary Navigation