Next week’s menus are all wrapped up – the only things missing are the ingredients. And that’s where Gunti comes in, ready for action anytime and anywhere. Gunti is the first app from Gunterswiler AG, a food wholesaler based in Switzerland’s Frauenfeld. The company has 18 staff along with a fleet of ten modern delivery vans. In early 2018, Köbi and Susi Gunterswiler – the third generation of the family-run firm’s managers – decided to get closer to their customers’ working environment. How? By making the firm’s products more accessible to commercial kitchens in restaurants, canteens, hospitals, care homes and schools.
The ieffects e-commerce app puts Gunterswiler products within touching distance
“Chefs are getting younger, and that’s one reason why we wanted to keep our eye on the ball,” say the company’s executives. The firm’s third generation is now taking on more responsibilities – and it started by making Gunti a reality. Gunterswiler sees the app as an investment in the future and a way to secure its competitive edge. Gunti lets users view the company’s whole range at a glance – from fresh fruit and vegetables through to dairy products and convenience foods. Not only that: it also flags up special offers, while enabling buyers to create personalized shopping lists and view past orders to speed up the order process. Another big benefit of the app is that users don’t even have to be online, so Gunti works just as well in a hermetically sealed cold store as in the kitchen.
For Köbi and Susi Gunterswiler, producing an e-commerce app was like venturing into uncharted territory – but today they’re really proud that they decided to go for it. Their innovative spirit has definitely paid off, especially as they planned everything well. The first thing they did right was to choose Zurich-based ieffects, a highly experienced e-commerce app developer that knew how to deal with every requirement, including integration with Gunterswiler’s ERP solution. And once the app was finished, the managers were very careful about how they launched it on the market, as they knew that some customers might need a bit of handholding. Their solution: hire a field salesperson who could visit chefs on site and show them how the app worked on a test device. As a result, most Gunterswiler customers adopted Gunti enthusiastically – and the company even won several new clients on top.
Quick and easy to use
Another key benefit of the app was that it helped Gunterswiler significantly reduce order errors, so that complaints almost dropped to zero. And that saves time and frayed nerves for all concerned. Gunti speeds things up as orders are processed right away. “As Gunti is so simple and clear, customers can easily view our entire range in it and quickly spot special offers, with the result that they tend to order more,” notes Michael Scheidegger, e-business project manager at Gunterswiler AG. Today, a little more than a year after the app was launched, about 40 percent of orders come in via Gunti – just as many as by phone. And that percentage is rising every day.
That’s why Gunterswiler AG is already thinking about extending the app. For example, some customers have said they’d like to be able to view stock levels. Technological progress continues to advance – in the catering trade just as much as elsewhere.
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