Our Story
MadChef — Every item. Every order. Lowest distributor wins.
We found out that the more distributors you do business with, the better the prices. This is probably the exact opposite of what you are used to, but don’t worry, you are not alone. Up until a few years ago, we were doing what most restaurants do and buying from the least possible number of distributors out of convenience.
Over the years, I’m sure you have also had salespeople come through your doors promising you better prices on identical or great substitute items from other companies. Why didn't you switch on the spot?
The answer is simple - There are way too many moving parts, and you have a kitchen to run. You have probably asked yourself - Do they really have everything that we need? How reliable are their deliveries? They are showing me great savings today, but will I still be saving money as prices fluctuate in the weeks and months to come? Left unanswered, these questions usually lead us to stick with the devil we know, and maybe to use that new price sheet to negotiate better prices with our current distributor. Does all of this sound familiar?
With barely enough money left at the end of the month, we were ready to break out of that cycle, so we started comparing pricing at our restaurant from two to three distributors each week. We had three people in the office, looking at the same exact ingredients across different distributor portals, and using Excel to manually compare prices.
The savings were eye-opening.
That was the moment we knew there was no going back. Sure, it was taking us about 45 minutes or so per day, but the return on investment was 10x at the very least.
Why did it take so long? The same items can be sold in different packs and sizes from different distributors, every distributor’s price sheet is in a different format, and some of the distributors have different delivery minimums and different delivery days than others.
At this point, you may be wondering what happened when our main distributors noticed that they were no longer receiving all of our business – Not a single distributor stopped doing business with us simply because we were shopping around, and this method continued to work like a charm, week after week.
After weeks of manually comparing prices, we decided to build an app to do the work for us—and called it MadChef. It was built in the kitchen at Amelia’s, our upscale restaurant in Stoughton, MA, with seating for 300 guests inside and another 150 outside. We take enormous pride in the quality of our ingredients and the exceptional reviews we receive across review platforms. Our goal was simple: buy the same high-quality ingredients at better prices, without compromising anything we serve. We tested MadChef on our own orders every week, turning a 45-minute price-checking process into 45 seconds. It has been a game-changer for our restaurant, and it can do the same for yours.
Keep the same ingredients you trust, but ditch the annual contracts or bulk buying requirements. The MadChef algorithm can save you over $10,000 for every $100,000 of food and supplies that you purchase. You read that right. That wasn't a typo. And that $10,000 flows straight to your bottom line.
MadChef, at its core, is a simple tool that optimizes for the lowest price per item, not the lowest price per order. It keeps iterating through every single item in your order until the order is complete. It does not consider your relationship with your salesperson, but for $10,000, perhaps it might be time to rethink how much that relationship with your salesperson is benefitting YOU.
Marios Michalakis
— Founder, MadChef · Owner, Amelia’s, Stoughton, MA
