As it is rightly said that nothing in this world is permanent, and that applies to our ever-changing needs and demands too. What remains a constant need is – Food. Yes, whatever we do, it brings us back to food, as you are what you eat!
There is no questioning the importance of food and especially the Food Supply Chain industry. There is always a growing need for trusted and reliable Food Supply Chain companies, that can rise to challenges and deliver exceptional results, every time!
This search brought us to Foods Connected. Foods Connected is a leading name in the Food Supply Chain industry, offering highly advanced and successful solutions. Roger McCracken holds the leadership of the company, paving the way for its unrivaled service offerings, and pushing its growth.
Today in an insightful interview we have, Roger McCracken, Co-Founder & Managing Director at Foods Connected Ltd. Let’s get to know more about the company, Roger’s story behind starting Foods Connected, and more!
Brief us about the company, what inspired you to start the company?
I hail from Northern Ireland and co-founded Foods Connected with Paul Armstrong and Gary Tyre, in direct response to the need for digitization of everyday food industry supply chain processes to improve quality, minimize risk and reduce costs for food businesses.
With family livestock & arable farming background and having worked in the meat processing sector for many years, I understood the problems facing the food industry and was therefore well positioned to establish the technology solutions required to help solve key industry challenges.
I saw the opportunity to create an innovative software solution that allows food businesses to cut down on the use of excel spreadsheets and paper by logging all their supply chain approval, quality assurance plus trading and planning negotiations on one easy-to-use cloud software platform, reducing costs and time massively.
The Foods Connected cloud-based software platform provides optimized transparency and control over the complete supply chain for food retailers, food manufacturers, and foodservice providers and is used globally by key players in the food industry. The platform has transformed the way the food industry operates and conducts daily tasks, to make food production safe, sustainable, ethical, and simple.
What are the products or services the company focuses on? How are your services different from those in the market?
Foods Connected innovates & transforms food supply chain processes through our one-stop-shop software solution that delivers increased transparency over each element of supply chain management for our customers in the simplest way possible. All of our supply chain functionality is tailored to real-world applications, based on requirements from our customers and the in-depth knowledge of our team of industry experts.
Foods Connected is designed specifically for the food industry, specializing in end-to-end supply chain management including; Supplier Compliance, Food Safety & Quality, CSR, Procurement & Supply Chain, Specifications & NPD, Traceability and Reporting & Analytics.
Foods Connected has been built entirely by food industry experts, many of whom previously worked on factory floors and therefore have first-hand experience of the issues food businesses face daily and have a solid understanding of how best to implement customer projects to maximize returns and mitigate risk.
We harness research, development, and innovation to revolutionize processes and improve sustainability in food. By combining industry expertise in conjunction with Foods Connected’s reporting and analytics tools, businesses operating in this space can stay one step ahead of the external forces that impact and influence their daily operations.
The Foods Connected platform is the only digital supply chain solution on the market offering tracking, control, and reporting across all key areas of the food supply chain within one single pane of glass view.
Please tell us about the team of Foods Connected?
Foods Connected was born out of our passion for solving problems and maximizing opportunities within the Food Industry. Our lively, passionate and extremely dedicated team collaborates with our customers to understand the changing problems and opportunities that the food industry faces and develop innovative ideas and simple solutions based on this to deliver real value in the industry.
Over the last 10 years, the Foods Connected business has gone from strength to strength – from a team of just 2 to a team of now over 80 staff members across the UK and Australia with plans to expand to other locations, while currently serving customers across Europe, APAC and North America!
Please tell us about your professional experience?
Foods Connected was designed with industry experts at the core. With a farming background and having previously worked locally within the food industry, I inherently understood the problems the food industry faced and had clear ideas around the technology solutions required to solve them.
While working for a leading UK meat company, I noticed that although food businesses had good digital systems already in place to manage finance, production, and inventory management processes, there was an opportunity in the market to create an innovative software solution to speak to the real needs of businesses working within the space.
By digitizing the core processes, I knew this would transform procurement, supplier management, food safety, and technical standards for the food industry. These processes were previously completed using a range of admin-heavy manual methods, including excel spreadsheets, pen and paper, emails, and phone calls, a time-consuming process – often leading to a duplication of work.
Therefore, to improve quality, minimize risk and reduce costs for food businesses, Foods Connected was born.
What are the key achievements of your business journey?
A key achievement of our journey is the level and scale at which we are now operating. Foods Connected are continually innovating to meet the needs of the industry, having recently updated our suite of solutions to include traceability, sustainability, and recipe management tools.
We have become key players within the supply chain software space tailored to the food industry and are now operating globally – from the UK, throughout Europe, as far as Australia. This is something we are very proud of, coming from small towns in the north of Ireland and building from a team of 2 to now a team of over 80 staff members – and still growing rapidly!
Looking back on how far we have come and all the faces that have joined us along the way to help get us to where we are make us extremely proud of what we have achieved. And we’re only just getting started!
Any client experience you would like to highlight?
At Foods Connected we are proud to receive consistently positive feedback from our customers. Our secret is going above and beyond to ensure customers can get the full benefit of our solutions, providing high-quality customer service, building tools to meet their needs, and working with them to improve their experience.
Hear directly from our customers below on how they have incorporated Foods Connected into their processes and how the software has transformed the effectiveness of their operations.
“Foods Connected has provided the framework to capture agreed sales & purchasing outcomes in one centralized location. This enables ease of comparison on all best price options for more informed business decisions.” – Woolworths
“We needed a solution to manage our expansive supply chain globally, to create greater transparency over every tier of our diverse network. Foods Connected has provided us with several integrated solutions, bringing visibility to our operations, to better track our supplier compliance, mitigating any potential risks.” – Marley Spoon
“Using Foods Connected has allowed us to drive standard processes across our business, helping capture data in a consistent way meaning the analytics allows us to easily see comparable performance on any level.” – Ornua Foods
What is your favorite quote?
“Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” – Theodore Levitt
