Easily manage multiple food and drink traders in one place

As you know, multi trader management across one (or several) sites comes with a set of challenges:

• Your guests are spending a lot of time queueing. Queuing for a pizza, queuing for a beer, queuing for churros…
• Ensuring each trader displays the right allergen information and is pricing consistently can be a lengthy and manual process.
• Reporting across each trader is fragmented. It’s hard to see who’s selling what, to whom and when. The trader might not even know themselves.
• If you’re running a commission or revenue-share model, you’re probably dedicating a significant time to chasing, or being chased for, payments.

We feel your pain. That’s why we created our multi-trader management solution, which will help simplify your operations and keep everyone happy.

Centralised menu management

With an array of traders, each with different menu options, allergen information, and pricing, it can be hard to keep track. Perhaps some of them flag the use of gluten, whereas others don’t. Perhaps one trader is charging £2 for a Coke and another is charging £2.50. The easiest way to manage this is to have all menu information in one system. Each trader can add their own information and edit on the fly. Meanwhile, you get an overview of all your traders, including allergen and pricing information, so you can ensure pricing and labelling is consistent.

Unlike other software providers, NOQ provides a backend portal for both individual traders and event managers. Managers can create sites or events in the portal from where they can view and manage everything, from revenue share to reporting. They can also provide traders with their own portals from which they can set up banking, edit menus, onboard staff, and access reports specific to them.

“NOQ’s web portal is fantastic. It has a really well-structured interface. All options are beautifully presented and it’s really easy to scroll through the different traders, subcategories and menus.” Stephen Busby, Operations Manager, Edinburgh Street Food. Read the full story >

Automatic split payments

Anyone running a revenue-share model will know the pain of manually calculating and chasing down commission payments. It can wreak havoc on cash flow. And it becomes even more complicated if different traders have different percentage agreements. What you need is a smart system that can automatically deduct the commission from traders at the point of payment. That way, everyone gets paid what they’re owed in one go. Traders have a better understanding of their daily profit and you have one less job to do in following up afterwards.

NOQ’s split payments feature lets you deduct a pre-determined amount at the point of sale, and settle to everyone’s accounts automatically. You can set bespoke arrangements for different traders. Whether it’s a simple percentage split, a fixed pitch fee, an overrider, or even a tier-based model, you have total flexibility.

This has helped to automate the process for &Munch while giving the company more insight and greater control, as Director, Vanessa Gilpin, explained:

“Before working with NOQ, all payments were handled by the caterers. They would log into their own EPOS and report their earnings back to us so we could invoice them. We didn’t have any visibility into their performance ourselves; we’d have to wait for the information. Now, we handle all the payments on our side and can split them at source, deducting commission at the point of payment. This really streamlines the operation. It’s also really helpful to have access to our caterers’ reporting. We can log into the system and see what’s happening in real-time. We weren’t able to do that before.

“It works so easily on a commission basis. It all gets set up beforehand in the backend so that every card payment is automatically split into whatever that commission agreement is. Payments are then settled directly into the accounts. This saves a lot of time and everyone knows when they are going to be paid, without any delays. It’s how business should be done; you don’t want anything more complicated than that.”

Backoffice access management

Centralised reporting is the essential thread that ties successful operations together. Without it, you’re running blind, which can end up costing you as you don’t have the information you need to optimise. For Hickory’s Brian Galbraith, visibility into performance makes it possible to predict in advance how many staff members they’re going to need and when. This is critical, especially when you consider the costs of getting it wrong, as Brian explained:

“You can be overly efficient and not have enough staff when you need them, potentially missing opportunities to make another 1%. Equally, if you have too many people standing around and not enough sales, you’re going to lose that 1%.”

A single view of your sales across all your sites, channels and traders makes this kind of forecasting much easier. Our real-time Insights app gives our customers access to live reporting in the palm of their hands. They can even generate reports and email them to stakeholders as needed.

“I’m addicted to the NOQ Insights app,” said Brian. “It’s especially great at a big festival or event; it’s just so easy to see how we’re doing at that moment. For instance: Some people have just gone to that bar, how well has it done? I can also see our sites from the comfort of my home office, which is fantastic when I can’t always get out to the event. And I can send reports to our customers for each bar, on each day, and for each event. You just go in, get the report, input the client’s email address and you’re done”.

Curious to learn more? Book a demo

We are determined to make running a festival, event, or food market as easy and streamlined as possible. That’s why we work so closely with customers, like ESF and Hickory, to develop the solutions they really need. Multi-trader management is one of them. If you’d like to learn more about our solution, get in touch to book a demo today.

 “The nice thing about working with a relatively young company is that you grow together. NOQ is always updating and evolving its system. It’s never 100% finished, just like our business is never 100% finished. Things are always changing and NOQ is always fast to respond.” Brian Galbraith, co-founder and Executive Manager, Hickory Food

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