In 2012, CEO Suneet Sachdeva returned to the UK after travelling to Asia and Australia. The first thing on his mind? Where he could find the traditional, fresh flavours of the unique Taiwanese beverage — bubble tea.
After struggling to find anything that fit the bill, he created Bubble CiTea, bringing the traditional values and flavours of Taiwanese tea to people around the UK. 🤤
Since then, Bubble CiTea has seen huge growth. With 50+ locations, a loyalty app, and a new click-and-collect service, it’s safe to say that Bubble CiTea is taking the industry by storm.
But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing.
The business has faced challenges on its road to success — let’s take a look at what these challenges were.
The challenge
As the business grew, Bubble CiTea struggled to maintain compliance, standards, and processes across locations. With more venues and staff, it became harder to keep tabs on operations in each location.
“It’s a tricky balance between opening and upkeeping the current locations.” – Mateusz Kapciak, Head of Operations and Business Development at Bubble CiTea.
And as more venues joined the business, inventory management became tricky to control.
Over-ordering ingredients became commonplace, meaning the business was throwing money away on ingredients they never used. Not only did this impact the bottom line, it also increased waste across the business.
To try and tackle this issue, Bubble CiTea used an inventory system. However, it lacked the real-time visibility the business needed to make fast and informed decisions to improve the bottom line.
“Our previous inventory partner didn’t work for us — and not for lack of trying. I wasn’t happy to go ahead to roll out to all venues because it just wasn’t working.” – Mateusz Kapciak, Head of Operations and Business Development at Bubble CiTea.
This also caused issues with supply chains. The business didn’t have a centralised operation to implement supply chains for all locations. As a result, individual venues were heading to the supermarket to buy ingredients. Teams on the ground were carrying over five tons of sugar from the supermarket.
The solution
Bubble CiTea chose Nory to help overcome these challenges. Our solid reputation, reasonable pricing, and integration with the POS system Vita Mojo made us the ideal candidate for the job.
Nory shows Bubble CiTea its sales and performance across all locations in real-time. Management has visibility across all operations allowing them to make fast and informed decisions to improve profit margins.
This visibility has also helped Bubble CiTea standardise its operations. Teams at different locations are all using Nory, meaning everyone’s on the same page about ingredients, costs, and so on. This helps each location maintain high standards and build a respectable brand reputation.
Nory is also super user-friendly, meaning that staff at all levels can use the system. Teams on the ground say they appreciate the ease of use and helpful AI support.
Now, what about inventory management?
We’re glad you asked! Nory has been instrumental in improving Bubble CiTea’s inventory management. With real-time visibility into sales and performance, management has been able to get a better handle on how much inventory is necessary to meet customer demand.
With Nory, we quickly spotted inefficiencies in how we manage stock. We noticed that certain stores over-order and waste a lot of ingredients and we put things right.
Mateusz Kapciak, Head of Operations and Business Development at Bubble CiTea.
This means that the central production unit (CPU) no longer over-orders ingredients, and individual locations request the right amount of inventory for their locations.
As a result, Bubble CiTea has reduced costs and food waste. For example, they saved £25k per annum on milk using data from purchasing insights, and have reduced waste by 44%, from 3.2% to 1.8% using Nory’s insights.
After launching demand-based ordering, we saw a considerable drop in inventory orders from locations. This means our locations are only ordering what they need, which reduces waste and cuts our costs.
Mateusz Kapciak, Head of Operations at Bubble CiTea.
What’s next for Bubble CiTea?
Bubble CiTea has big plans for the future:
- Further expansion in the UK, focusing mostly on growing into shopping centres
- Growth into European and UAE markets through franchises and wholly-owned stores
Nory will be at the heart of this growth, supporting future franchises as the business grows., In fact, the brand has decided to mandate Nory for future franchisees — so it looks like we’re sticking around for a while. 🥳