Setting the scene
The Chefs’ Warehouse Inc. (Nasdaq: CHEF) is a specialty wholesale food distributor based in North America. It delivers quality products to 44,000+ customers in the US, Canada, and beyond. The $4 billion business empowers chefs to bring their creative visions to life by providing access to more than 70,000+ imported and domestic products; including hormone-free proteins, artisan cheeses, truffles, oils, caviar, and chocolates.
Recently, the company expanded its portfolio of offerings and its workforce through multiple acquisitions including Greenleaf, Chef Middle East, and Hardie’s.
The Chefs’ Warehouse also prides itself on its personal service model; boasting a team of highly knowledgeable sales representatives who offer tailored support, guidance, and inspiration to customers ranging from hotels and Michelin-rated eateries to restaurant groups and independent food stores.
To satisfy its exacting customers and remain competitive in the marketplace, The Chefs’ Warehouse knew that its digital transformation had to go beyond its recent Optimizely CMS upgrade, selecting Bynder’s DAM as the foundation of its digital ecosystem.
Partnering with Bynder would help the company unlock a more agile, modern way of processing the steady stream of incoming product images for its revamped e-commerce website, which launched in 2022.
Key challenges before adopting Bynder
The brand needed to enhance its marketing capabilities by resolving several operational pain points:
- Many of the company's acquisitions originated as family-owned businesses. The Chefs’ Warehouse had inherited vastly varying systems, point of sale (POS), and marketing programs. With many of those businesses spread across the West Coast and in urban areas across the country, colleagues were in desperate need of a clear system of record for all assets.
- With a huge catalog of over 70,000 products — supported by thousands of brand, product, and lifestyle images — it needed a system of record for its asset organization.
- It required an efficient asset distribution system that could be adopted quickly by its broad user base for sharing files with colleagues based across the US.
- Members of the marketing team were spending too much time on menial tasks like resizing and optimizing image files due to the limitations of their out-of-date DAM.
- Product assets were being stored in different locations. From Microsoft OneDrive folders to external hard drives, the lack of a central hub resulted in files not being securely stored or easily located by content stakeholders.
The Chefs’ Warehouse saw Bynder as the solution that would solve the above challenges; allowing it to remain competitive in the marketplace, and importantly, consistently demonstrate its brand values of Expertise, Experience, and Excellence.
The marketing team saves invaluable resources each week with Bynder
Bynder’s DAM is now the system of record for The Chefs’ Warehouse’s digital assets. Its growing Bynder user base adopted the platform quickly and now benefits daily from far more streamlined asset-sharing, search, optimization, and distribution processes. In fact, the organization estimates that it has managed to save 40 hours per week since Bynder’s introduction.
With Bynder’s AI-powered search, robust taxonomy, and ability to seamlessly integrate with downstream platforms like Optimizely, content stakeholders — everyone from graphic designers and regional brand managers to digital merchandisers and the social media team — can now:
- Quickly and easily locate and share assets with others
- Save invaluable amounts of time and manual effort by serving image assets directly to the website (via the Optimizely integration)
- Greatly reduce spend on stock photography
- Conserve valuable resources by using Content Experiences (CX) Omnichannel to automatically resize and optimize image assets — also removing the need to train new hires, due to its intuitive nature
“The time and resources we've saved with Bynder’s Content Experiences (CX) Omnichannel feature have been a game-changer; enabling us to optimize our content and improve SEO effortlessly.
“When considering the amount of time usually spent on searching, emailing, uploading/downloading, and resizing images, we estimate that our team now saves around 30 to 40 hours each week.” — Andrew Steelman, Senior Brand Manager
The Optimizely integration coupled with The Chefs’ Warehouse’s use of Bynder’s Content Experiences (CX) Omnichannel capability also means that the asset optimization process can be fully automated. Ultimately, CX Omnichannel boosts content experiences by improving website performance (including SEO) and driving conversions.
Empowering the sales team and enabling content-led business growth
With Bynder’s platform, The Chefs’ Warehouse can now enjoy a more ‘digital-orientated’ way of working; allowing sales team members to harness intelligence, manage much larger books of business, and strengthen relationships with their high-end, specialist customers.
"Our team can now locate and share assets in seconds, significantly reducing the time and effort previously spent on these tasks." — Andrew Steelman, Senior Brand Manager
Discover what an AI-powered DAM can do for your brand
Bynder’s tailored, AI-powered solution supports organizations like The Chef’s Warehouse to effectively and efficiently manage their content operations. Add-on Bynder modules like Content Experiences (CX) Omnichannel, Content Workflow, and Content Experiences for User Community offer brands the chance to achieve new levels of brand consistency, collaboration, and marketing ROI.
Sign up for a free demo, and learn why over 4,000 global brands have already partnered with Bynder.
