Highlights — TLDR

1. Adaptation to Off-Premise Dining: Sofrita, known for its Latin-American cuisine, shifted focus to off-premise dining during the pandemic, needing an efficient delivery system.

2. Integration with Deliverect for Efficiency: Sofrita integrated Deliverect through Touchbistro, transforming their off-premise dining management and simplifying order flow.

3. Increased Speed and Order Consistency: The use of Deliverect increased delivery order speed by 4x, reducing average order fulfillment time from an hour to 20-30 minutes.

4. Automatic Menu Updates and Error Reduction: Deliverect enabled automatic menu updates across multiple platforms, reducing errors and labor involved in manual updates.

5. Enhanced Customer Experience: The efficiency and consistency brought by Deliverect helped move loyal dine-in customers to using delivery platforms, improving overall service quality.

Deliverect enables Sofrita to simplify order flow & deliver orders up to 4x faster.

Since opening for business 11 years ago, Sofrita has built a reputation among the residents of Fountain Hills, Arizona, for its lively atmosphere and excellent Latin-American food, particularly Puerto Rican dishes and happy hour drinks.

The restaurant’s Technology Director, Anthony Redendo, explains that the name is inspired by the Puerto Rican salsa Sofrito, which is used in many of the territory’s classic dishes. He says that his mother, Puerto Rican owner Carolyn Redendo, adapted the name to give it a feminine touch. 

The shutdowns of 2020 posed a real problem for the business, which was focused on providing a lively atmosphere and friendly service for dine-in customers. With off-premise dining becoming a necessity, Sofrita had to find a way to make it work.

A post-pandemic reboot thanks to Deliverect

When the pandemic hit, Anthony took a break from his successful career in cybersecurity to help set up online ordering and delivery so the business could continue to operate. 

He revealed that the restaurant’s old POS system didn’t integrate well with newer technology, so his first step was to start looking for a system that would integrate with delivery partners and other tech platforms. 

He came across Deliverect through its Touchbistro integration and it transformed the way the restaurant managed off-premise dining.

Deliverect simplifies order flow as delivery orders increase by 4-10x 

Anthony explains that with orders being received manually from multiple partners, there wasn’t a consistent system in place. It was complicated and prone to errors, making it difficult to ensure the food was ready as the driver arrived. 

“Before we used Deliverect,” he says, “The main issue was the time it takes for one of our employees to accept an order and then make sure it prints.”

The team implemented Deliverect to cope with the increase in delivery orders, and he saw an immediate improvement, as Anthony explains: 

“With Deliverect now, it’s super nice that someone will place an order, and it will normally get picked up in 20-30 minutes. Which was almost unheard of before.”

He adds: “With Deliverect, each order gets accepted and printed automatically, and it goes to every single printer. The flow is definitely simplified.”

Automatic menu updates improve consistency & save labor

Using multiple platforms created more teething issues as the restaurant started to accept more online orders. Updating multiple menus, either with new dishes and specials or when a dish had to be snoozed if it was sold out, became a tedious and longwinded process. 

Staff would have to log in to multiple accounts and make changes manually, which often led to errors and inconsistencies. With only a handful of staff members out front, it was difficult for them to keep up and ensure the menus were accurate and up to date across all platforms.

“Even if you take your time,” Anthony says, “It’s super difficult to go into every portal on all the different delivery apps and add an item or change the description on all the items.”

With Deliverect, a team member can update the central menu, and all the changes are pushed out automatically to the delivery partners. Anthony says it is one of the most critical features for Sofrita: 

“To have all those different iPads and tablets and ensure they’re charged, make sure someone’s looking at them and ringing orders in. It’s nice not having to worry about it.”

“It’s been great and really helped us a lot,” Anthony says, adding, “Now updating menu items is super easy. If something’s out, you just snooze it and it’s snoozed everywhere. It’s almost instantaneous, you can see it on the app straight away.”

Anthony says the changes have helped move loyal customers onto delivery platforms: “We have customers who dine in a lot who are now also getting takeout, I believe because of that consistency.”

Deliverect ensures orders are delivered 99% error-free, up to 4x faster 

Overall, Deliverect has enabled Sofrita to open a new revenue channel as the online ordering and delivery landscape has changed around them. All without putting a significant burden on their existing staff and resources.

Anthony says: “The time from when we accept an order to when it gets picked up, before Deliverect, was an hour on average, sometimes two hours. Now it gets picked up in 20-30 minutes.”

Now orders get accepted and delivered up to four times faster and errors have been drastically reduced to the point where Anthony estimates they are 99% error-free.