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Daily Supplier Order Builder

Example prompt: "Every afternoon at 3pm, look at our current stock and the bookings for the next two days, work out what fresh produce, dairy, meat, and dry goods we need, group it by our preferred supplier for each line, and draft an order email per supplier for me to check and send."

The Problem

The fish order has to be in by 3pm, the dairy order by 4pm, and the dry-goods order by 5pm or the morning van does not bring what the kitchen needs for tomorrow's service. The job of writing the orders is twenty minutes of cross-referencing the stock sheet against tomorrow's bookings and the day after, broken up across the day by service prep and the manager's other jobs. What gets ordered too often is "the same as last week" because there is no time to do the projection properly, which means we either run short on the days the bookings are heavier than last week, or we throw away food on the days they are lighter — both of which a restaurant on tight margins cannot really afford.

How GloriaMundo Solves It

We build a workflow that fires every afternoon at 3pm and pulls the current stock counts from the morning's stock take, then reads the next two days' bookings from the reservations sheet. A code step projects the ingredient requirements from the menu mix the same way the kitchen prep list does, then subtracts current stock to give the net order quantities by ingredient. An integration step reads the 'Suppliers Master' tab to find each line's preferred supplier, the unit they sell in (a kilo of cod loin not a portion, a tray of butter not a knob), and the cut-off time for next-day delivery. An LLM step drafts a per-supplier order email in the manager's voice with the lines grouped together, our standard delivery instructions, and a clear needed-by date. The drafts sit in Gmail for the manager or head chef to read and send — there is no auto-send, because a wrong fish order is a wrong fish bill, and the cost of a five-minute review is much smaller than the cost of getting it wrong. Slack gets a short summary in #ordering with the supplier list, the order totals, and any line where the projection ran short on stock the kitchen had not flagged. Glass Box preview shows the projection, the supplier grouping, and the drafted emails before anything lands in Gmail.

Example Workflow Steps

  1. Trigger (scheduled): Every afternoon at 3pm, before the fish supplier cut-off.
  2. Step 1 (integration): Read the morning's stock counts from the 'Stock' tab in Google Sheets, including unit (g, kg, L, each) and pack size.
  3. Step 2 (integration): Read the next two days' bookings from the 'Reservations' tab — covers, sitting, and any pre-orders.
  4. Step 3 (code): Project ingredient requirements from the menu mix the same way the prep list does, then subtract current stock to give net order quantities by ingredient.
  5. Step 4 (integration): Read the 'Suppliers Master' tab to map each ingredient to its preferred supplier, their unit and pack size, and the cut-off time for next-day delivery.
  6. Step 5 (code): Group the net order quantities by supplier, rounding each line up to the supplier's pack size and flagging any item whose cut-off has already passed today so it can be moved to a backup supplier or pushed to the day after.
  7. Step 6 (llm): Draft a per-supplier order email with the line items, our delivery address, our standard delivery-window instructions, and a clear needed-by date.
  8. Step 7 (integration): Save each per-supplier email as a Gmail draft addressed to the listed supplier contact.
  9. Step 8 (integration): Post a one-screen summary in #ordering on Slack with the supplier list, the order totals, and any cut-off-passed warning the manager needs to act on now.

Integrations Used

  • Google Sheets — the stock sheet, the reservations sheet, the menu-mix ratios, and the 'Suppliers Master' tab with preferred supplier, unit, pack size, and cut-off time per ingredient
  • Gmail — the per-supplier order drafts, saved to the manager's inbox for sign-off before send
  • Slack — the #ordering channel summary and the cut-off-passed warning that needs human action today

Who This Is For

Managers and head chefs at independent restaurants and gastropubs running a fresh-supply rhythm — fish and produce daily, dairy and meat on a three-day cycle, dry goods weekly — where the stock sheet and the bookings sheet are both in Google Sheets and the supplier order goes out by email to a small set of regular contacts.

Time & Cost Saved

The daily order takes a manager twenty to thirty minutes when done from scratch, and what we see most often is that it is done from last week's order with a quick scan of the stock — which is faster but tends to over-order on quiet days and under-order on busy ones. The workflow projects the requirement from the bookings instead, which trims the food waste line on the P&L by a few percent and removes the run-short days where the kitchen has to eighty-six a dish at 8pm. The time saving alone covers the cost; the food-cost saving on a thirty-cover restaurant is typically a few hundred pounds a month.