From chat to a trusted order.
F&B chains and franchise groups in Vietnam run on chat, spreadsheets and memory. We designed this around how you already work: the order arrives as a message, the agent reads it into a structured order, your team approves it, and it becomes a real supply order.
- The order arrives1
- The agent reads it2
- A person approves3
- Supply order4
- Lots and expirynot built
- Receivablesnot built
The stage bar, as it appears in the product
Four things chain owners bring up most
Ranked by how often it happens times what it costs when it goes wrong. These are the ones we designed to hit hardest, taken from this vertical's own design document.
Material orders live inside messages
Every outlet writes differently, sometimes with a photo attached. Supply ops retypes it, drops a line, gets a price wrong. A short delivery costs the outlet a whole shift of sales.
Receivables sit with the legal entity, not the outlet
One owner can hold several outlets. If your money comes from supplying materials, receivables are the revenue, and right now they are in a spreadsheet.
Lots and expiry dates
Beverage ingredients have short shelf lives. Pick the wrong lot and you write it off, and when there is a quality incident you have to know which outlets that lot reached.
Input prices move, the franchisee price does not
Supply margin is the profit. Input costs jump two to four times a year, and it is usually at period close that you find a whole quarter went negative.
How a material order travels
The first four run today. The last two are designed and not built, and we mark them so you never have to guess.
0106Stage 1 of 6
The order arrives Running
- What it does
- Takes the order as plain text, typed or pasted straight from the message. You can start today without waiting on any integration.
- What stops it
- The text is kept word for word. The system does not rewrite what the customer said.
- What it leaves behind
- The original is kept so it can be compared against what the agent read out of it.
Where data comes from
- Original text Entered by supply ops
- Received at Recorded automatically
A reference table, not buttons.
Start a pilot at this stageThe agent reads it Running
- What it does
- The agent reads the text and builds a structured order: which outlet, which items, what quantity, in which unit. Whatever it is unsure of, it flags on its own.
- What stops it
- The draft sits on its own and has not touched real data. This runs in a controlled shadow mode, not as automatic order entry.
- What it leaves behind
- Both the original text and the agent's draft are kept side by side.
Where data comes from
- Order lines Extracted from the original text
- Uncertain parts Flagged by the agent for a person
A reference table, not buttons.
Start a pilot at this stageA person approves Needs approval Running
- What it does
- Supply ops opens the draft, fixes any line that needs fixing, then accepts or discards it.
- What stops it
- A hard stop. Without someone accepting it, the draft never becomes an order.
- What it leaves behind
- Who looked at it, what they changed, and whether they accepted it.
Where data comes from
- The draft From the previous step
- Edits Made by the reviewer
A reference table, not buttons.
Start a pilot at this stageSupply order Running
- What it does
- The accepted draft becomes a supply order. Every later change to its materials is written as its own revision rather than overwriting what was there.
- What stops it
- Only something a person accepted becomes an order.
- What it leaves behind
- The order keeps its revision chain, so three weeks later you can still answer why it changed.
Where data comes from
- Order contents The accepted draft
- Material revisions Each later change
A reference table, not buttons.
Start a pilot at this stageLots and expiry Designed, not built
- What it does
- By design: an immutable stock ledger, lot and expiry on every receipt, oldest expiry going out first, and a warning when a delivery is being packed from the wrong lot.
- What stops it
- The design puts the oversell check here, and this is the path you trace back along when there is a quality incident.
- What it leaves behind
- From a lot out to the outlets that received it.
Where data comes from
- Lot and expiry Goods receipt
- Stock per outlet The stock ledger
A reference table, not buttons.
Start a pilot at this stageReceivables Designed, not built
- What it does
- By design: receivables tracked against the partner legal entity rather than the outlet, with ageing, and a credit hold that blocks new orders past the limit. The hold goes through review rather than firing on its own.
- What stops it
- The design is explicit that the system does not issue e-invoices. The seller issues them, the software tracks and links.
- What it leaves behind
- From a balance back to the orders behind it.
Where data comes from
- Balance per entity Supply orders and payments received
- Ageing From the invoice date
A reference table, not buttons.
Start a pilot at this stageThe agent reads, a person decides
The design document puts it in one line: the agent reads, drafts, reconciles and warns, and a person approves anything that touches a franchisee, a contract, a price or a compliance statement. The agent's draft stays separate from real data until someone accepts it.
Walk the three steps
This is still only a proposal. It sits on its own and has not touched your real data.
Illustration, sample data
The parts of this industry, and which exist
Orders and approval: running
Take the order as text, the agent structures it, a person approves, it becomes a supply order with revision history.
Outlets and catalogue: being built
Operating locations, items, units and conversions, versioned price lists.
Stock and quality: being built
An immutable stock ledger, lots and expiry, the two tier food safety obligation matrix.
Cash: switched on by model
Only for chains that genuinely sell materials to another entity. An independent restaurant is not forced into it.
Four worth asking first
We run our own outlets, no franchising. Does this still fit?+
Yes. The core is outlets, catalogue, purchasing, stock and quality, and that is shared across every model. The franchise parts and the receivables parts only switch on when your chain actually sells materials to a separate legal entity. Chains that run their own stores move stock internally rather than pretending it is a sale.
So what can we use today?+
The front of the line: the order arrives as a message, the agent structures it, your team approves, and it becomes a supply order with revision history. If that is where supply ops loses hours, it helps now. Stock, lots and receivables are not there yet.
Is this restaurant management software?+
No. We do not do point of sale, table management or shift scheduling. We do the operations behind them: material orders, supply, stock, compliance and receivables. Chains abandon food ERP because it is too complex, so we keep tight tables with a detail panel rather than hundred-field screens.
We already hold HACCP or ISO. Does this replace them?+
No. The standard stays yours. Our design turns the obligations into a matrix per outlet and per legal entity, because the obligations are not the same for every site and every product. That part is being built, not running, and we are not going to say otherwise.
Another industry, same way of working
All three share the same principles: data knows its source, anything going out needs a person to approve it, and every run can be replayed. If your team works across more than one, it all lives in one place.
If your orders are sitting in chat
That is the part we finished first and the easiest place to see a result. Talk to us, and if stock or receivables is where it actually hurts, you may be the one who shapes that part.