The Galley Adoption Rate Approach: 3 Steps To Employee Buy-In, Culinary Usability, And Greater ROI
We were shocked when we heard it: major foodservice groups have spent millions of dollars on food enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and endured months of onboarding, only to end up with a 30% adoption rate.
This even comes in lower than the average ERP adoption rate of 37%, which is still abysmally low, when you zoom out of the food industry.
And we both know what a low adoption rate really means:
Most employees revert to guessing and looking for a supervisor, as well as old processes (spreadsheets, or worse—pen and paper)
New employees never learn to use the software during training
Which causes the ERP to lack large portions of clean, detailed data
Smashing your ROI to pieces and holding you back from growth
Employee buy-in is the unsung hero of effective ERP software, and in the food industry, we have a real problem encouraging adoption where it really matters—the culinary side.
Managers and business executives can use an ERP for reports all they want, but if the cooks on the kitchen floor aren’t engaging with it, the data remains incomplete and fractionally useful.
At Galley, we’re proud to say our users experience an adoption rate that is double the average ERP software buyer—it’s software people actually use.
And we’d like to share why.
Galley’s Award-Winning UI Actually Feels Good To Use
Most ERP software feels clunky and cluttered, as if a user-friendly interface is just a backburner “nice-to-have”. But anyone who has to use software that looks like it was made in the early 90s has the same reaction when they log in every day: yikes.
Chefs and cooks are already stressed—software should ease the burden, not add to it.
This is why we designed Galley for culinary usability from the ground-up. Our straightforward structure and award-winning interface feels more like a carefully-crafted consumer app that’s easy to use than a clumsy software they’re forced to endure. It means…
We continue to add features without adding clutter
New employees see Galley as an asset, rather than an obligation
Kitchen vs back-office tension about software is minimized
And this is all before we even get to the core value of Galley.
Chefs Using Galley Feel Like They Have Superpowers
Inputting data into traditional food ERP systems feels like a chore that doesn’t offer much practical value to anyone who works on the floor. It’s more like logging data for records, rather than creating something with that data.
We knew we had to build Galley with a creation-focused model to engage the culinary side, so we built a metadata structure just for food businesses that’s incredibly simple to learn (recipes, ingredients, and menus), but unlocks powerful functions chefs actually use.
Chefs love using Galley because the data model offers culinary building blocks and real-time feedback loops they can use to create more effectively.
A few examples…
Layers and layers of recipes. Galley’s data model can easily handle “nested recipes”. You can add a core marinara recipe, see how it relates to your spaghetti, pizza, and eggplant parmesan recipes, and then automatically create a purchase order based on expected demand.
Instant conversions all day long. Cups, ounces, grams—conversions take forever to calculate. In Galley, it’s all taken care of automatically, across all units, ingredients, and recipes, so cooks can stop tinkering with the calculator.
Allergens, nutrients, and beyond are tracked automatically. An ingredient’s metadata follows it everywhere so cooks can easily identify recipes based on a number of metrics (gluten-free, peanut allergy, etc).
When employees on the culinary side see how easy interconnected clean data makes costing, planning, and production—and how much less time they have to spend logging numbers into some ancient ERP—they’re hooked.
Adoption And Success Starts In The Sales Process
Software sales has long been executed with a harmful dichotomy: you engage with the sales department, then you work with a customer success advocate to make sure you get the most of your investment.
It should surprise no one that this approach fails to properly engage businesses from the start. Organizations sign contracts that look good on paper, but when it’s time to get into the weeds of onboarding, the process becomes more arduous than they initially realized.
At Galley, every sales conversation is framed by a custom “Success Plan” that includes analyzing recipes, trialing the software, and training. This integrated process means we never acquire customers without first exploring in detail how Galley can help move your food business forward.
It also means you know exactly what you’re getting into, gain first-hand experience using the platform, and understand our process for maximizing employee buy-in—all before making a commitment.
These three elements of Galley have led to nearly 100% higher adoption rates for our customers compared to other food ERPs.
Want to see what an ERP system looks like that your team will actually want to use? Get in touch right here!
