Case Study / B2B Food Operations
Connecting customer orders directly to the kitchen floor.
A shared operating platform for a food manufacturer and distributor, spanning account-specific wholesale ordering, production, costing, inventory and invoicing.
Context
One business operating on both sides of supply.
Monterra Foods manufactures desserts, bakery products, breads, cheeses and sauces while also aggregating and distributing commodity ingredients to restaurants, cafés and retailers.
That combination creates an operating model in which recipes, ingredient costs and kitchen production have to remain connected to wholesale catalogues, customer-specific prices, orders and delivery. The challenge was not simply to add more interfaces. It was to give the business one coherent system underneath them.
Connected System
One platform. Three operational surfaces.
The office, the kitchen and the customer do not need the same interface. They do need to work from the same underlying records.
- 01
B2B client portal
Approved trade accounts access an account-specific wholesale catalogue, negotiated pricing, order status and invoices from a mobile-first portal.
- 02
Kitchen application
Production staff work from a focused view of the orders, recipes, components, stock movements and tasks that matter on the kitchen floor.
- 03
Admin and ERP
Operations staff manage products, recipes, ingredients, costing, inventory, suppliers, customers, leads and orders from the same data model.
B2B Client Journey
A wholesale relationship has stages.
Monterra’s portal is not a consumer shop. It is an account-based product for restaurants, cafés, retailers and other approved trade buyers. Each account can access the products and commercial terms relevant to that relationship.
The platform also treats sampling as a real stage in the client journey. Prospects can move from lead to sampling account, approval and commercial access through explicit permissions rather than informal handovers between disconnected tools.
- 01Lead
A prospective account enters the commercial pipeline.
- 02Sampling
Relevant products can be sampled and tracked before commercial ordering begins.
- 03Approval
Access is reviewed before negotiated terms and ordering become available.
- 04Trade account
The buyer orders through their account-specific wholesale catalogue.
Order to Production
The customer-facing product is part of operations.
When an approved trade account submits an order, it enters the same operational model used by the kitchen. The customer portal is therefore not a storefront bolted onto a separate back office; it is another controlled view of the system running the business.
As the order moves through confirmation, production, delivery and invoicing, each team works with the same underlying record through an interface designed for its environment.
Operational Economics
Costing that follows the ingredients.
Manufacturing economics cannot be represented by a static product price alone. Ingredient prices change, preparations have yields and one preparation can become an input to another.
KitchenFlow recomputes recipe and preparation costs from current ingredient prices, including nested components and yield adjustments. The costing logic sits inside the same platform as products, inventory and customer ordering rather than in a disconnected calculation.
Technical Foundation
Important rules are enforced by the system.
Admin, kitchen and client experiences are served through distinct subdomains with access rules appropriate to each role.
Account, sampling and order states move through defined transitions rather than relying on staff to remember every permitted next step.
Lifecycle and stage events create an operational history while notifications keep the relevant people informed as records move.
Commercial Communication
The platform became part of the proposition.
Monterra’s public digital communication introduces the business as both maker and supplier, while a dedicated ordering-process experience explains how approved B2B clients move from account setup to repeat ordering.
This gives the operational product a role before login: the ordering experience itself becomes part of how Monterra explains its service to prospective trade customers.
What the Work Established
A connected operating foundation from account approval to delivery.
- A B2B ordering productApproved buyers can work through an account-specific wholesale catalogue rather than a consumer storefront.
- One operational recordCustomer ordering, kitchen production, delivery stages and invoicing are connected inside the same platform.
- A system shaped around the businessManufacturing, distribution and sampling are represented as parts of one operating model.
This case study documents the platform and capabilities delivered. Operational and commercial impact has not yet been published as a measured outcome.