Two industry providers celebrate a partnership of more than 14 years

Celebrating more than 35 years of delivering market-leading food-to-go solutions, Delice De France is a respected leader in food distribution and supply. Specialising in the retail and the out of home market, Delice De France works in conjunction with food manufacturers to supply a complete range of frozen foods. Offering premium bakery, hot food to go and thaw and serve products, the company’s business model is a simple, yet effective way for customers to order and sell a great range of quality foods using their telesales or web shop.

Discussing the effectiveness of the business model, Nick Bignell, Hardware Operations Manager at Delice De France comments:

“We operate in a unique way in that we offer a complete solution to retailers and out of home operators. We are known for our ever-growing range of food choices, but to complement this, we supply our customers with all the equipment they need to store, bake, serve and display their food, on a loan basis. From ovens to chilled or heated display units, we have thousands of units on loan across the country at any one time. We supply the equipment, in return for a customer entering a contract to buy and sell our foods and return a share of sales to us.”

With national customers including CostCutter, Nisa as well as thousands of independent and franchised sites, Delice De France has built a reputation for quality food, outstanding customer service and unrivalled support. Understanding that without the equipment, operators would be unable to serve the lucrative food-to-go, Delice De France requires an equipment service provider it can rely on. Nick explains why Tec Line offers the peace of mind and technical expertise required:

“Our customers rely on us to supply the food and equipment they need to operate their business. It’s crucial that we have that equipment backed by a comprehensive service and maintenance provision – this is where Tec Line comes in. Having worked with Jason and the team for more than a decade, we understand each other and ultimately work in partnership to support our customers. Tec Line offers a complete range of planned preventative maintenance contracts, while also delivering a reactionary service where required. This means we can regularly service and maintain our equipment, while also covering urgent requests, minimising downtime and ensuring our customers have everything they need, when they need it most.”

For Nick, it’s the partnership with Tec Line that is so important to Delice De France, he continues:

“Tec Line is just the right size, can listen to our needs and is able to communicate with us in an effective way – each an element that has enabled us to have such a successful partnership over so many years. Expected to service and maintain our complete portfolio of equipment across the entire country, Tec Line takes on a huge responsibility, but ultimately, it’s the fact that the company’s engineers are correctly trained, located nationwide and stock all the most common spare parts in order to quickly and efficiently fix any issues that make them the right choice for us.”

Working in conjunction with Tec Line, Delice De France carefully handpicks the equipment supplied to sites, something that helps to simplify the service and maintenance requirement for Tec Line. On the choice of equipment, Nick goes on to say:

“We place a lot of insight into selecting a range of equipment from a handful of carefully selected manufacturers that cover all customer requirements. There’s little point in us stocking hundreds of different appliances from several different equipment manufacturers that causes additional cost, replication and complication. This helps us keep things simple, but also reduces the number of spare parts engineers are required to stock on their vans. Each piece of equipment could stay at one site for its full lifecycle, while others may return to us yearly. In this instance, we would refurbish and repair the unit before being tested by Tec Line and sent on to another site. This is quite a unique situation, but one that Tec Line can expertly support us with.”

For Delice De France, the partnership with Tec Line has been pivotal to business growth, especially during the challenging times recently faced by the market. Concluding, Nick highlights the importance of getting things right, first time:

“We understand that without their equipment our operator customers simply cannot offer food-to-go, something that drives profits in their business. Because of this, we need a service partner whom we can trust and can always rely upon. Working in conjunction with Tec Line, we monitor three key areas – the first-time fix rate, the time to call and the on-time and complete rate. I’m pleased to say that Tec Line is consistently excellent across all three, meeting and often exceeding our agreed standards.”

For more information on Delice De France, please visit www.delicedefrance.co.uk