How to Get Your Head Chef to Love Your ERP

Let’s be honest. If you walk into a busy kitchen at 5 AM and try to hand your Head Chef a laptop, you’re going to get "The Look."

You know the one. It’s the look that says: "I have 400 loaves to bake, two staff out sick, and a supplier who just shorted us on butter. I do not have time for your data entry."

And they’re right.

Most software implementations fail in the kitchen because they are pitched as "management tools." Owners want the data, the margins, and the COGS. But to a chef, that just sounds like homework.

If you want your production team to actually use Supply’d (and stop using the whiteboard), you have to stop selling it as a tracker. You need to sell it as a tool.

Here is how you bridge the gap between the office and the oven.

1. Stop Calling it "Admin"

Chefs are artisans, but they are also engineers of volume. They care about consistency and flow.

If you tell them an ERP is for "reporting," they will hate it. If you tell them it’s a Digital Sous Chef, they will listen.

Frame the system as the thing that handles the grunt work:

• It scales the batch math automatically (no more mental arithmetic at 3 AM).
• It remembers the exact supplier SKUs so they don't have to.
• It tells the junior staff exactly what to pick, so the Head Chef doesn't have to babysit.

2. Kill the Clipboard

The clipboard is the enemy. It gets lost, it gets greasy, and it has coffee stains over the critical numbers.

Show your kitchen team that the ERP isn't adding a step; it's replacing a worse one.

The win here is the Ordering workflow. Every chef hates the end-of-shift supplier run—texting three different reps, logging into a wholesale portal, and writing emails.

Show them that with two taps on a tablet, the system scans the stock, builds the POs based on what’s actually needed, and fires them off. You just gave them 20 minutes of their life back.

3. Respect the Environment (Hardware Matters)

This is a practical one that most ops managers miss.

Do not put a laptop on a stainless steel bench. It takes up space, the keyboard gets full of flour, and the screen is never at the right angle.

• Get a tablet.
• Mount it at eye level (away from the splash zone).
• Get a robust case.

If the device is seamless to use—like a knife or a mixer—it gets used. If they have to go to the "office corner" to log data, they’ll save it for later. And "later" usually means "never."

The Bottom Line

Your kitchen team doesn't hate technology. They hate anything that slows down the pass.

If Supply’d makes their day smoother, prevents the "we ran out of flour" panic, and handles the boring math, they won't just use it. They’ll defend it.

Start small. Give them the win on ordering first. The rest will follow.