So... what’s going on with v3.1 and Vite Modular Kitchen(VMK?)

So... what’s going on with v3.1 and Vite Modular Kitchen(VMK?)

Wasn’t it supposed to be shipped by now?

...Yes, and I’m frustrated about it.

See, everything was supposed to be here already. But we kept getting hit by poor documentation, for months. Even as recently as last week, our blending partner reported that some ingredients were being delivered without their proper documentation, and thus, couldn’t be accepted and blended.

That means a small number of ingredients are holding up everything, things that need to go be re-tested, re-certified, and sent correctly.

The current date when we’re slated to receive all of it is early September.

I don’t want this to happen again, and this is what we’re doing about it.

1. Creating a “pantry” style system, rather than using a JIT(just in time) system.

If I asked a French chef to cook regional Chinese food, they’d have to spend a lot of time and money getting the ingredients, since their pantry doesn’t stock Chinese sauces normally!

That’s kind of the difference between our old system, JIT, and the new one. JIT system basically orders ingredients to get there “just in time,” calculating the timing of ingredients to arrive at the same time in order to keep a low inventory carrying cost, which reduces the amount of money we need to keep in inventory.

Pretty essential since we don’t have investor money!

But... let’s be real... never really worked very well because I don’t think we’ve had a truly functional global supply chain since the pandemic... When it worked, it worked and was great to let us have faster turnarounds and more flavor types than other companies, but when it doesn’t... we get big supply chain gaps held up by just a few ingredients.

Now, what we’re going to be doing is keeping a baseline stock of a lot of ingredients that we know see a lot of use, in order to reduce potential lead time problems.

This does cost quite a bit of money to do (tens of thousands and more depending on the ingredient), but we’re calculating that this pays off in the end, since we should ideally be able to reduce the time gap by doing this, kinda like if the French Chef had Chinese sauces to begin with.

2. New dedicated logistics specialist

We’ll have a new person joining Vite next week! Our current supply chain manager orchestrates 400+ ingredients, components, and merchandise items across dozens of suppliers.

They're brilliant at math and the complexities of recipe optimization and all the fun math and computer stuff involved... But that also means they don’t have time to follow up on every single supplier every single day.

That’s our new hire's job: follow-up. One of the #1 things we had in the interview was seeing if they’d rather email first, or call first... and they said calling first without prompting!

They’ll be lurking by the phone lines, living in supplier inboxes.

Tracking every certification, shipment, and deadline, hounding each one about shipping it correctly, double verifying that it’s being done correctly before we have to go through this annoying SNAFU again.

3. Expanded Supplier Search

This new person also means we have significantly more time to search for, and validate new suppliers, allowing us to get more backups, more easily, and be able to plug gaps even quicker!

One of the biggest issues we always face is that as a small business, we just don’t need 50,000lbs of single ingredients, which means that we’re pretty limited in who we can work with.

A huge amount of suppliers unfortunately can’t work with us because their Minimum Order Quantity(MOQ) is just beyond what we can do-- their machines are literally too big to blend the small batches we need.

(yes I used a double hyphen/em dash there look I’ve been trying to change my writing style because people think em dashes mean AI writing now but man just let me have this one okay)

So, here’s what we’re going to do.

We’ll be including FREE titanium chopsticks on every order of VMK.

This will not apply to the regular packets, unfortunately, as we can’t really afford to do that on the smaller and more expensive pack sizes. But, any order of Vite Modular Kitchen from now until delivery WILL receive a FREE pair of titanium chopsticks.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It doesn’t make up for all the time. But it’s what we can do for now as we improve for the future.

--

Also, I haven’t forgotten about the cookbook and other stuff! I’m writing it still, it’s just... gonna be an interesting book, haha.

On Thursdays, at 5PM PST, I’ll be streaming at

http://twitch.tv/timjzheng

to show off some of the recipes that were requested as well, so make sure you tune in!

A quick speedrun of other things, in case you didn’t get the updates:

Basically, everything got released from tariffs all at once, and we’ve been scrambling getting all that transport and things organized. Once they all arrive... it’ll be a mad blitz of fulfillment!

Thank you for your support and patience, and remember to be kind, and savor life’s little victories!
If you want in on the free chopsticks, you’re still able to.

-Tim, Founder Vite Ramen who doesn’t like to use the CEO label anymore because it was just kind of a bit to begin with even though I’m technically a CEO on paper it was funnier when I did dumb things but now people seriously actually think I’m a rich person instead of having a car that’s old enough to go to college