Kespro: Changing how Finnish restaurants achieve profitability with the new Recipe service

Link to the Recipe service landing page

Kespro is Finland's leading wholesaler, currently serving over 15,000 restaurants and professional kitchens. Kespro operates in the Foodservice market, where its competitors include Valio Aimo, Wihuri's Metrotukku, S Group's Meira Nova and several specialty wholesalers. Kespro is part of the K Group. Kespro initiated its service business in 2019 as part of its growth strategy, aiming to move beyond being a wholesaler. The strategic goal was chosen to support the customer's business, particularly from a profitability perspective, because the success of customers is critical to Kespro's business as well. The goal became to provide best-in-class services to support customers' daily operations and tackle their biggest pain points. The Recipe service represents one of the first tangible implementations of this vision.

Since Kespro began planning and researching new tools, the challenges faced by the restaurant industry have only intensified. Due to inflation, consumers' living costs have risen, reducing their disposable income and, consequently, their ability to eat out. At the same time, the prices of raw materials have also increased. The ripple effects of the war in Ukraine, such as rising energy prices, have further impacted restaurants' costs, making profitable business operations even more difficult. According to The Finnish Hospitality Association MaRa's industry report in late 2024, the situation is particularly concerning as restaurant sales volume decreased by 4.4% between January and September 2024.

In addition to the aforementioned challenges, Kespro's research and customer interviews indicated that the availability of services supporting the profitability of small and medium-sized restaurants was and still is very limited. However, this did not discourage Kespro, which boldly decided to create a new service for the industry.

The restaurant industry's challenges have caught widespread public attention. Media coverage has highlighted the closure of beloved local establishments, while data from Suomen Asiakastieto Oy reveals that over 3,000 restaurants declared bankruptcy last year – a ten percent increase from the previous year.

Profitability has become critical, especially for small and medium-sized restaurant businesses. The Recipe service was built and developed to address this issue. The vision behind it was to create a service that would simplify, automate, and optimize the profitability of food products using reliable data. Kespro's Recipe service provides real-time data, centralized recipe management, and intelligent cost management tools that save time and improve profitability. As seen in Kespro’s preliminary customer interviews, many operators still rely on manual methods to calculate dish profitability.

Creating profitable restaurant menus requires careful cost management. Food and beverage profit margins must cover substantial operating costs: staff expenses (27-42% on average), food waste (exceptionally high in buffet-style establishments), and other costs such as rent, and energy costs.

Through on-site observations in private restaurants of various sizes, from small to medium, Kespro got needed insights into the challenges faced by restaurant staff, including kitchen workers, waiters, managers, and owners. To their surprise, they discovered that some restaurants updated their recipes with ingredient costs and margins only once a year, and the tools to do this were badly outdated or scattered and ineffective. Some clients used still pens and paper and some Excel. Large restaurant units and chains have traditionally utilized some software solutions designed for restaurants, but according to Kespro's findings, they were complex, expensive, and complicated to navigate, especially for smaller restaurants.

The project team gathered findings using empathy mapping, value proposition canvases, and service blueprints. With these insights at hand, the team developed a brand-new concept for a service that would help restaurants use a single program to track the real-time profitability of their operations and share recipes across all workflows.

Recipe prototype was developed and tested with four restaurants during its initial iteration. It underwent two additional development cycles before evolving into a more refined version. In the second quarter of 2022, Kespro continued refining the concept through further user testing with five restaurants. Insights from these tests helped narrow the scope of the minimum viable product. By the third quarter, MVP validation was underway, with eight additional restaurants participating in a more detailed evaluation process.

By late 2022, the concept had been broken into different modules, with the recipe management feature identified as the “North Star.” Proof of concept was conducted to ensure the data quality and technical feasibility of the proposed solution. With these assurances in place, development of the Recipe service began in August 2023.

By January 2024, the Recipe service was ready for internal testing within Kespro. Between March and May of the same year, the service entered its pilot phase, involving 78 restaurants. Feedback from the pilot phase helped the team make refinements and improvements, paving the way for the official launch of the service in August 2024.

The service was launched with a marketing campaign across Kespro’s own channels, industry media, and outdoor advertising to ensure quick adoption and awareness of the new service. Special attention was also given to onboarding new users. A digital onboarding path was developed to help new users quickly gain value from the service in their daily operations.

The launch focused on celebrating professional creativity by offering a tool that simplifies operational challenges. The aim was to bring a sense of positivity and delight to an audience that has endured significant challenges in recent years.

The data available at Kespro has been made easily and efficiently accessible to the customer through the service. The customer no longer needs to worry about changes in raw material prices, packaging sizes, product information, or product outages, as the service automatically alerts them. When a consumer inquires, the restaurant can conveniently check the special diets of the dishes from the service or print out the details of the day's dishes, for example, for a buffet table.

In the future, the possibilities of using data will increase dramatically. Kespro will be able to better serve its customers in a targeted manner, taking into account customer preferences, for example by offering similar products if there are challenges with the availability of raw materials for the customer's recipe, by offering more affordable or more sustainable products, or by offering new menu ideas based on the customer's business idea, trends or seasons.

Kespro can use the data obtained from the service to develop better service not only for its customers, but also for the food industry.

The launch highlighted Kespro's evolution from wholesaler to service provider, focusing on developing customers' businesses and delivering real value. This service distinguishes Kespro from other local and international wholesalers, as it's currently the only wholesale company offering such a solution.

The results speak for themselves. The new service among Kespro customers has been warmly embraced across Finland. Within the first five months, users created over 4,000 recipes using the service, with an average recipe creation time of five minutes compared to 30 minutes with service competitors. Users spend an average of 17 minutes on the platform – five times longer than other Kespro digital services (excl. Kespro online store). Analytics show users engage with multiple features rather than focusing on a single area, indicating the service's broad usability.

Customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with many user suggestions already implemented by the project team in the early development stages. Over 2300 users and the number is growing all the time. NPS score of 77 which is currently the best of all Kesko's digital services.

The Recipe service demonstrates what happens when customer insights are combined with extensive data – it has helped Kespro differentiate itself through hard-to-replicate competitive advantages.
Early results show positive momentum. Kespro's internal sales team and 60 field experts have integrated the service into their portfolios, actively presenting it to customers. The Recipe service has already helped generate new wholesale business leads.

The Recipe service is available for Kespro’s clients.

Link to the Recipe service landing page

Grandone details

The categories

Paras digitaalinen palvelu, Paras palvelumuotoilu & Paras datan käyttö

The team

Kespro: Taiju Jaatinen, Charrlotta Ylimys, Mari Savolainen, Elisa Nyström, Aleksi Järvinen, Karri Gardemeister, Jani Lampinen.

Futurice: Aino Kuru, Susanna Immonen, Jouni Kaplas, Jukka Nieminen, Ville Sillanpää, Kai Inkinen, Jaakko Husso, Olli Hietamies, Saija Hälikkä, Marja Käpyaho, Kai Forsman, Olli Kanerva, Jenna Koskimäki, Teemu Mikkonen & Lisha Dai.

Columbia Road: Niina Reponen, Anna Müller & Jakob Sumelius.

United Imaginations: Steve Brown, Julius Kontiola, Tuuli Turunen, Mirette Kellokumpu, Sami Kelahaara, Mika Herrala, Inka Ottela & Nelli Lindén