How to Address Recurring Need for Staple Foods and Achieve Supply Demand Equilibrium
Commodities that people need on a recurring basis are ideal to run the subscription billing business.
Food is an inevitable recurrent need as it is important for the survival of human beings. Subscription is an ideal business model for businesses that deal with food in its raw or processed forms.
Many restaurants are already offering subscriptions for meals and deals.
Not only cooked food but staples have also quite a wider scope for subscription-based business. Staple food items e.g. wheat, rice, cereals, grains, oils, meat, fish, vegetables, and many more are also needed, regularly. Many people have a dedicated budget for staple food items. They recurrently order these items through various supply chains.
Recurring billing is also one of the best models to address the recurrence in needs for staple food items and avoid supply-demand mismatch. How? Here, we are going to shed light on various facets of the supply-demand of staple food items and the role that efficient subscription management software can play in streamlining supply chains.
Where the Pain Point Lies?
You need to understand that there are many middlemen involved in the process of supplying staple food items to the customers. These suppliers can be manufacturers themselves or they can be wholesalers, distributors, and traders.
The balance of supply and demand often disrupts when the number of middlemen increases. The involvement of more people makes the process complicated, delayed, and expensive.
There are three scenarios to fulfil the customer demand for staple food items. First, the producer can directly offer the customers to purchase rice, wheat, cereals etc from his flagship stores. Second, he can sell the food items to a supplier. The supplier will sell these goods to the end customers. Third, the producer can sell food items to a trader (though a trader can pick his consignment for the food items from more than one producer). The trader will sell these food items to the customers.
Along the supply chain, the core objective is to fulfil customer demands. From manufacturing till fulfilment, different people play different roles in these supply chains.
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When roles of middlemen are not properly defined, supply-demand misalignment is evident. The sole solution to manage this misalignment is to shift your staple food business to subscriptions and manage your subscribers.
Subscription Management as a Way to Align Staple Food Supply-Demand Chain
Now that we have identified the problem that affects your staple food supply chains, it is time to move towards the solution. It is the recurrence of the need for staple food items that the customer’s demand always increases. Many eCommerce businesses that supply wheat, rice, barley, and cereals etc fail to identify that many discrepancies that they have to deal with in their supply chains are because their customer has recurring need. Concrete policies, business plans, and software are needed to address these customer needs.
Whether you are a producer, supplier, or trader, the solution to your supply-demand mismatch lies in the subscriptions. And to manage subscriptions, you can opt for the recurring billing and payment platform.
Advantages of Shifting Your Staple Food Business to Subscriptions
Time has long gone when subscription billing was considered an apt business model for SaaS companies. Today, many manufacturing industries are also shifting to recurring billing. People need staple food and you can harness the recurring need for wheat, rice, oils, and cereals etc for the boost of your eCommerce staple food business.
Many online grocery stores and restaurants that were operating eCommerce supply chains are already shifting to a subscription billing model. Subscriptions can streamline your eCommerce staple food business in the following ways:
Stability
The delays and complexities in the supply chain can be avoided and stability can be achieved if you shift your eCommerce business to subscriptions.
Once you shift to the subscriptions and use an apt subscription management platform, you will find that many issues that you previously had to deal with will automatically disappear. Things will get streamlined.
Reliability
Offering subscriptions is the best way to get customer reliability. Suppliers and traders offering staple food are many in the market. No one wants his customers to leave. If you want your customers to have a long-term relationship with you, then offering subscriptions for staple food items e.g. oils, rice, grains, wheat, cereals, and vegetables etc is the best way to achieve this goal.
As long as customers get staple food items in time and dependable delivery services they will not leave.
Predictability
No business model offers the level of revenue predictability that you can enjoy with the subscription billing business model. You know the number of your subscribers and the type of subscription package they have. It is not difficult to calculate recurring revenue for a week, month, or year.
If you are using a recurring billing platform, it will be even easier for you to analyse data and predict revenue. Producers can analyse customer data to analyse the demand. They can manage their manufacturing unit to cater to customer recurring needs that ultimately streamline the recurring revenue stream.
Growth
If you opt for subscriptions, there are fair chances of growth of your customer base. Subscriptions not only simplify the eCommerce business processing but are also attractive for the customers. Customers get rid of placing the order again and again for the staple food items they need. The orders and payments are handled by the distributor or supplier (usually through a subscription management platform).
So, if you shift your eCommerce business to subscriptions to handle staple food orders, you can increase your number of customers.
Role That SubscriptionFlow Can Play in Your eCommerce Staple Food Subscription Business
The focus of the eCommerce staple food businesses remains the supply of the items on time. Other than that there are the following issues that they need to address:
- They need to experiment with the price that they offer for rice, wheat, and other food items.
- It is difficult to manage recurring billing and payments
- It is difficult to manage paybacks and discounts.
- They encounter difficulties while managing inventory.
- They fail to optimize the customer unwrapping experience.
- They fail to deliver the staple food order in time.
- Many staple food items are perishable and failure to timely deliver the order can cause the issue of handling the food items.
The best tool to beat these challenges is SubscriptionFlow. You can use different online payment methods to cater to the needs of your customers. The SubscriptionFlow is integrated with reliable payment gateways. You can either go with the default payment gateway or choose other ones that fulfil your eCommerce business needs.
If you use SubscriptionFlow, you can conveniently manage your subscribers and their payments. You will be able to plan discounts, offers, and coupons and handle different payment options of different customers. It is always a challenge for eCommerce businesses to manage inventory and warehouses. If you integrate the right software with the core recurring billing platform, you can streamline the whole eCommerce staple food subscription business processing.
The orders can be delivered with accurate details of invoicing and payment and enhance the unwrapping experience of your subscribers. The problem of the perishability of food items can be handled if you manage your inventory and time to deliver the orders. Both the inventory and time of the delivery can be taken care of with the subscription management platform.
Recurring billing management platforms like SubscriptionFlow provides you with a chance to manage all subscribers. When you manage subscribers, you can better understand the customer needs for staple food. You can find ways to improve manufacturing and cater to the needs of more customers.
Also Read: 6 Challenges That eCommerce Subscription Businesses Might Face in 2021 and the way Forward
In conclusion, the idea of recurring billing is innovative for the manufacturing industry, especially for the staple food industry. Staple food manufacturers entering the eCommerce business stream can take a step forward and embrace recurring billing. It can help them get the better of supply-demand imbalances as mentioned in this article.
SubscriptionFlow is an AI-based recurring billing management platform that can help you enter the new markets to offer your staple food items and manage your food supply chain. Contact their team of experts now.
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