Thinking Sideways. Moving Forward.

Channel management in the food business is often seen as a linear challenge. Just check stuff off the list… Items. Quantities. Delivery dates. Price points. Shelf life.

But in reality, when it comes to distribution channels, nothing is completely straightforward.

When you're ordering containers full of food for a cruise ship sailing in a week, you need a channel partner that does a lot of creative, lateral thinking.

Sideways thinking can be the difference between smooth sailing and constant stress.

The order sheet only tells half the story.

On paper, a purchase order looks like a straight line: A to B. Product leaves the warehouse, product arrives at the dock. But anyone who has worked a food service supply chain knows the straight line is a myth.

Things change… A supplier's quality slips from pallet to pallet. A distributor doesn’t have room in the warehouse. A chef needs a substitute, tonight, for an ingredient that just sold out three states away.

None of those problems show up as a line item. They show up sideways, from an angle nobody thought of or budgeted for.

That's where an order taker gets stuck. They're built to move down the list — get the order, process the order, wait for the next one. When the problem doesn't fit the list, they don't have a next move.

A Channel Ambassador does. They can think sideways and be proactive. That's how you head off problems before they even arise.

That's exactly what happened when a customer called us looking for a good brand of plantains.

It should have been simple, but as our team was vetting suppliers and testing product, we found a problem. Quality varied wildly from shipment to shipment. There wasn't a single brand out there we were willing to stake our reputation on.

A straight-line thinker would have shrugged, quoted whatever was sitting in the warehouse, and called it done.

Instead, we went to Colombia, tracked down a processor who worked with a network of growers, built a partnership and launched our own brand.

Nobody asked us to launch a plantain brand. But when the direct path doesn't exist, the sideways path is how you actually solve the problem.

Sometimes the sideways move is a swap nobody expected.

Lateral thinking doesn't always mean building something new. Sometimes it's a single, well-placed substitution that results in delicious differentiation.

When Sanguich de Miami was perfecting their Cuban sandwich, they weren't going to settle for the same old Swiss cheese that everyone else was using. They demanded more.

It took a lot of tasting and melting before they chose Ammerlander Swiss from Germany. The decision looked small on paper, but it helped turn an above-average Cubano sandwich into a Michelin Gourmand-winning menu item.

That's not a decision you make by working straight down a price sheet. It's a decision you get to by listening to the Channel Ambassador who’s working on your behalf… The Ambassador who knows the goal, knows the kitchen, and knows where to turn for solutions.

Self-ordering apps have simplified some things — and created problems in other areas.

To be fair, technology has made plenty of channel management easier. Standing orders, reorder points, invoicing — a good app handles all of that better than a phone call ever could.

But an app only knows how to move in a straight line. It can reorder what you ordered last time. It can't call around Colombia looking for a better plantain grower. It can't taste twelve wheels of Swiss cheese until it finds the one that will help win awards. It can't sense that a customer's needs are about to shift before the customer knows it themselves.

When everything's routine, self-ordering tools are a genuine upgrade. But the moment something goes sideways a portal has nothing left to offer. That's exactly the moment a Channel Ambassador picks up the phone.

Cruise ships can’t wait for a straight-line solution.

Back to those containers headed for a ship that sails in a week. There's no room for "we'll get back to you Monday." Every item, quantity, and delivery date needs to land exactly right, and if one piece of that puzzle goes missing, somebody has to think sideways, fast, to find an alternative.

That's the job… Not just managing a list, managing everything the list doesn't show you. Like the substitutions, the workarounds, the relationships, the people you call in at 9pm on a Friday, because you can.

Linear thinking keeps the paperwork clean. Sideways thinking is what keeps the ship sailing.

Got a channel challenge that doesn't fit neatly on a spec sheet? Get in touch with Ambassador Foods and let a Channel Ambassador think it through with you.