Frankfurt (Germany) and Lagos (Nigeria), January 2020. We have previously written about how Pricepally helps Nigerians to mitigate the highly volatile prices of food staples and produce. Here we present a case study on how Pricepally’s features are designed to fullfil B2B as well as B2C roles.
This volatility also impacts organizations and businesses operating in food service, or that rely on providing food to beneficiaries as a part of their operations. These can be divided into B2B entities such as restaurants, catering services, and independent chefs as well as B2B2C entities such as employers who offer employees food discounts as corporate benefits, or organizations such as orphanages. In both cases, wildly fluctuating prices and local market conditions are hugely disruptive to operational planning.
To illustrate the situation, we present the case of Ms. Busola who runs an organization that supports several orphanages. As a part of their charters, the orphanages provide room and board to their wards, and as a result need predictable access to staple foods and produce in bulk.
Operationally, her procurement requires monthly bulk food purchases from local produce and food markets. Low trust, price volatility, and low accountability mean that Ms. Busola has not been able to establish long-term relationships with suppliers. Trust affects not just her relationships with suppliers, but also with her own procurement team requiring her to delegate purchasing to five individuals to avoid issues of embezzlement or collusion with vendors. Trust and accountability issues aside, the non-transparency and fluctuating supply add to the logistic challenges of acquiring variable amounts from different vendors. In addition to the operational issues with procurement, pricing variability has downstream effects on her budgets as well as directly affecting the monthly menus for the orphanages themselves.
Upon testing Pricepally for her procurement needs, Ms. Busola reported an increased sense of trust and accountability in switching to a single verified supplier. She was pleased with the instant support and feedback provided by the platform’s customer service department. Additionally, shopping with Pricepally removed the logistic costs of procurement for her organization.
Since her initial order, Ms Busola has become a monthly buyer on the platform which she uses to acquire staples such as beef, beans, rice, and fruit.
In an effort to increasingly support corporates, Pricepally is has also just launched a new corporate benefits program, allowing Nigerian companies to help their employees save on food purchases. Similar to the ‘Pally’ buying option, aggregating company employees together with a delivery at the company’s premises allows Pricepally to drive the costs down for the employer, while providing a quality benefit to the employees.
Pricepally team is on a mission to increase access to affordable and quality food in African cities and this service to small and larger companies is a step in that direction.
Download the Case Study here, or with the link below.