Dear Foodservice Partner:

With 2010 right around the corner, it's time to look ahead and begin planning for a successful and profitable year. With commodity prices continuing to rise, the foodservice industry will face many challenges next year. So how can businesses achieve a profit in such a difficult market? By achieving greater efficiencies. With efficiency, comes many rewards, namely profit.

We recently wrapped up our Second Annual Customer Conference and I am eager to share with you some of the lessons learned. First of all, efficiency, it seems, has become the word of the year. Nearly everyone is talking about it and looking for ways to improve it. In fact, efficiency is one of the areas we analyzed in our Second Annual Food Service Industry Survey. While respondents were quite pleased with their supply chain’s performance in cutting costs, increasing efficiencies and doing more with less, they saw opportunity to push the envelope in generating additional operational efficiencies. I invite you to read more of the telling survey results.

ArrowStream has been helping CFOs develop a better understanding of the supply chain process. Two resources you won’t want to miss:

• “The CFO – Supply Chain’s Missing Link” — A Webinar co-presented by Wendy Kleefeld, VP, Supply Chain Management at ARCOP and Alex Brown, EVP, ArrowStream. Together they cover the challenges CFOs face with supply chain management and strategies to overcome them.
• “The CFO’s Supply Chain Advantage: Improved Predictability, Reduced Risk & Better Cash Flow Management” — An article written for CFOs that discusses how extensive organizational knowledge coupled with an intimate understanding of supply chain data and functions becomes a powerful tool for enterprise-wide efficiency.

We know that most quick service restaurants are working to overcome economic, consumer and industry challenges to improve business performance and profitability. Wendy's is a great example of improving efficiency while controlling costs. Learn how they achieved these goals by reading the Wendy's Case Study.

We are committed to leading the industry and sharing our insights with you, whether it’s through events such as our recent Customer Conference where chain operators exchanged ideas and best practices, or online through our Blog, “Supply Chain Insights”. To learn about other ArrowStream news, happenings in the industry or related events, please click here.

Thanks for taking time to enjoy our fourth quarter edition of Connections.

Best,

Steven LaVoie
Chairman & CEO, ArrowStream

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