Full blog starts below the line

Our noodles are in extremely high demand right now. We’re grateful for the love and support, but supply chains are still sadly being difficult.

Your patience allows us to create the best ethical work environment we can for Vite Kitchens, and allows everyone to maintain a healthy work life balance and avoid burnout and overwork!

Any product marked MTO means it’s currently Made To Order, and means your order spot is secured, and we will guarantee the materials needed for your order. The current MTO order queue will take up to 4 weeks OR MORE to complete. It takes more time if there are additional supply chain disruptions out of our control, or a surge of demand which means we need to place additional orders for materials!

Any product marked as LQ means it’s currently Limited Quantity, and we’ve gotten enough materials to keep a small amount of inventory in stock. An order with ONLY LQ items in the order will be fulfilled and shipped as soon as all other LQ-only orders ahead of it are processed. This can take up to two weeks from the order date, and sometimes more, depending on how many items are in queue and how much MTO we need to make. Items will be rotated in and out of LQ and MTO status depending on what supplies we’re able to wrestle in from the supply chain.

If LQ items are added to an order containing MTO products, they CANNOT be split, and will ship when the MTO items are made.

Hey, remember my last blog post about when I said a good problem to have is still a problem?

Well, yeah, about that...

Our noodles are (still) in extremely high demand right now, which is awesome! Our hardworking production crew have been wrangling noodles at record rates, and backorders are starting to get caught up on!

...

Well, that’s the good news. The bad news is that, however fast and skilled our noodle wranglers are, we’re still at the mercy of the supply chain at large.

As you’ve probably heard all over the news, supply chain problems continue to plague everyone, and so we have gaps in certain materials and what we can get of some flavors. Vite Ramen is an incredibly complex product in terms of ingredients, with all the nutrients, the different blends of real dehydrated ingredients we use, and also now the specialized aroma oils we source.

That means that sometimes, we’re not able to get just one or two things for something, like packaging, or one of the special soy sauces we use in our three soy sauce blend in the Roasted Soy Sauce Chicken, and we can’t produce that one thing until it comes.

This is increasingly common, and we’re just not big enough to secure large ongoing contracts, or have enough excess cash sitting around to buy huge lots of stuff.

To combat this and create as much transparency as we can, we’re going to be implementing a new system by tagging all items with one of two codes:

MTO or LQ

MTO means Made To Order, and it’s pretty much what it sounds like. It’s not exactly a preorder, and it’s not exactly backordered either. Generally speaking, it means we’re juggling supply chain issues with that product and are matching orders to the amount of materials we have supplied. It guarantees that your order will be made with the materials that we have ordered, and ensures your spot in the queue and that your order will be made!

Once all materials for that batch are spoken for, that product will read SOLD OUT. As soon as all materials are present, we’ll be making that product and getting orders sent out ASAP.

Generally speaking, you can expect MTO items to take up to 4 weeks to ship, though this can sometimes be more depending on the supply chain.

LQ, on the other hand, means Limited Quantity. Even through the supply chain disruptions and high demand, we are able to keep a running inventory stock of some items. It’s named LQ because, well, we have them made and have a limited quantity of them and will need to fight the supply chain to get more later, but at the current point in time, we have inventory.

This doesn’t mean this will ship instantly either, and will be subject to how many LQ orders are ahead in the queue, as well as how much MTO we’ve got to make. Generally speaking, LQ orders can take up to 2 weeks to ship.

If LQ items are added to an order containing MTO products, they CANNOT be split, and will ship when the MTO items are made. This is currently a limitation on our backend system, where splitting things gets really messy with partial fulfillment on orders and can end up causing a lot of issues. :(

LQ and MTO items will be rotated in and out as we procure more supplies for some things and end up having to wait on other things. Utilizing this MTO and LQ system, in addition to pre order waves helps us a ton in planning ahead as far as possible while juggling a lean business without the need to take on investors!

We’ll be announcing LQ and MTO rotations, as well as when we’re hopefully able to just put everything back into normal stock through emails and on our social media, so keep an eye out!

-Tim, Vite Ramen Founder/CEO, who still isn’t sure how to sign off

P.S. If anyone is wondering about VR:GO, we had a lot of trouble with the machine, and I did accidentally knock over the 80lb machine off the table... Don’t worry, I sort of caught it at the expense of a few minor injuries, and this thing is SUPER sturdy and is working fine. The holdup on getting it set actually has to do with a sensor error that was happening before I knocked it off the table, and we’re waiting on a replacement sensor before we can get VR:GO orders out. In my defense, I wouldn’t have even managed to knock it off the table if I didn’t have to wiggle into such a weird position to adjust and test the sensor... It happened as I verified the error and was trying to get all the covers back into position :(