4 Corners is enforcing its "one-stop-shop" strategy this year, starting with the launch of its eco-friendly warehouse in Dubai Investment Park 2 in the next few weeks.
The firm's marketing manager Nathalie Hall told Caterer Middle East at Gulfood: "We are saying to all of our customers that we can be your supplier for everything – you don’t need a different supplier for your frozen food or chilled food. We can consolidate your whole supply chain."
The warehouse operates at 35,000 square feet but due to a mobile racking system, has a total capacity of 75,000 square feet.
Hall revealed: "We’ve introduced the state-of-the-art mobile racking which means we maximise all the space – we have racking going from the floor right up to the ceiling. So it means we can have the same volume of operations in half the space. The idea is to use less energy, and produce less carbon emissions by minimising that physical build."
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In addition to the warehouse, which can also provide a food production area for consumers, 4 Corners is also rolling out its multi-temperature vehicles, which have been designed to transport items in three sections - frozen, chilled and ambient.
Further, Hall said the firm is implementing an e-ordering system, whereby every time an order is placed, a separate LPO is not raised. Rather, the customer will have a unique login and one LPO per customer's orders will be raised.
She said: "If you're a customer, you can have a unique login and can see all of the products along with details – the pack sizes, the nutritional guide. So every time they place an order they’re not having to raise a separate LPO. At the end of each month, you can just receive one paper invoice.
"Whereas at the moment every single time an LPO is raised, they receive a paper invoice and each invoice would then be signed by three people. One company had 37000 paper invoices in a year and that can be reduced. If you could get that down to just 12, that would be one a month."
Hall is insistent that the measures are being taken to provide an eco-friendly service. "Our intern Hebah did a case study where she did a blind investigation and took 15 of Dubai’s top hotels, did work at goods in department and saw their supplier list. One hotel, let’s call it Hotel X, had 120 suppliers just for all of their food.
"We worked out 780 million km are being travelled in Dubai’s food supply chain just to supply the hotels. That’s just the hotels, not even standalone restaurants, and that’s like going to the moon and back 75 times. That is producing a lot of pollution, so with this idea, we can reduce all that."
4 Corners has now consolidated the supply chain for one of its clients, Caffe Nero, and sources all of its products. She concluded: "That’s what we’re trying to do with each of our customers: we’re trying to be their number one supplier, and consolidate their whole basket of products."
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