Case Study: Popular Food Service Company achieves 60% faster invoice processing and onboards 8,600 suppliers with Direct Commerce

Popular Casual Dining Company Onboards 8,600 Suppliers with Direct Commerce

Popular Food Service Company, a $4.1B operator of roughly 1,450 restaurants across the U.S. and 20 countries, faced a complex, highly distributed supply chain with 8,600 suppliers and nearly 50,000 monthly invoices. The company engaged Direct Commerce to automate invoice processing and supplier interactions where other source-to-pay providers had fallen short, initially deploying an intuitive web-hosted portal that let restaurant managers submit, update and check invoices, match diverse supplier product codes, and gain inventory insight.

Direct Commerce expanded the solution into a centralized Global Supplier Portal—integrated with the company’s SAP ERP and piloted with the top 11 suppliers (≈75% of spend)—adding self-service support, a routed ticketing system, proactive onboarding and hourly data updates. The rollout to all 8,600 suppliers in 2019 helped reduce invoice processing time by 60%, streamlined supplier communications and cut staff burden, delivering measurable efficiency gains and broad supplier visibility.