How Dishpatch Got Waitrose-Ready

Plot Twist: Clean Books = Smooth Acquisitions

Meet Dishpatch

The Mission: Delivering the UK's best chefs and restaurants nationwide

The Scale: 40 people, ~£5M GMV, fresh off a £10M seed round

The Plot Twist: They got acquired by Waitrose in June 2024 (and guess what helped make that happen?)

The "Our Internal Team Is Drowning" Situation

Dishpatch was doing great - growing fast, serving amazing food, making customers happy. But behind the scenes? Their finance team was barely keeping their heads above water.

The pain points were real:

• Management accounts taking 2-3 weeks to finalize after month-end
• Balance sheet accuracy issues that kept everyone up at night
• Overstretched internal team trying to juggle way too many accounting processes
• No clear month-end process - just controlled chaos every 30 days

As Pete put it:

"Delivering accurate management accounts in a quick timeframe after each period end, over reliance on an overstretched internal team on many of our accounting processes, and helping improve balance sheet accuracy."

Translation: "We're growing fast, but our finance setup is not keeping up, and it's becoming a real problem."

Why Not Just Hire More People or Go Big Four?

Pete's reasoning was refreshingly practical: Big Four firms and traditional solutions were "too expensive and inflexible."

When you're a fast-growing food delivery company, you need someone who gets the unique challenges of your business model - inventory management, restaurant partnerships, rapid scaling. You need agility, not bureaucracy.

The 90-Day Finance Makeover

We rolled up our sleeves and got to work on the fundamentals:

The Foundation Rebuild

• Balance sheet cleanup and restructuring - finally, numbers that made sense
• Clear month-end process implementation - no more finance team panic attacks
• Process optimization - especially around those tricky balance sheet reconciliations

The Results: From Finance Stress to Strategic Confidence

The Numbers

• Month-end close time: 2-3 weeks → 3 days (yes, really)
• Team bandwidth: Internal team freed up from finance firefighting
• Strategic clarity: Leadership could actually make decisions based on current data

The Morale Boost

As Pete noted: "Great to be able to quickly get a clear picture of performance (P&L and balance sheet) each month end."

When you can see how you're actually performing without waiting weeks, everything changes. Strategy becomes proactive instead of reactive.

The Plot Twist: Hello, Waitrose!

Here's where things get really interesting. In June 2024, Dishpatch got acquired by Waitrose. And guess what played a huge role in making that deal smooth?

Clean, timely, well-documented finances.

Pete explained: "Being able to provide timely and accurate management accounts in the lead up to the acquisition was key, as well as having everything clearly documented so we could answer any questions that came out of due diligence very quickly."

Post-acquisition integration? Seamless. The Waitrose team could easily understand Dishpatch's accounts and processes, making the integration into their systems straightforward.

Clean books = smooth deals. Who knew?

Growing fast but your finance setup is holding you back?

Or maybe you're eyeing an exit and want to make sure your books won't scare off potential buyers? Let's chat about turning your finance chaos into your competitive advantage.

Let's Chat