William & Co. Foods
William & Co. Foods uses Choco to streamline their order processing, onboard customers and save time.
William & Co. Foods was established in 1998 by Bill Kinnealey. After 25 years of working for his family’s meat-packing company, Bill started his own business. He began with four employees and now employs 50 people to provide quality cuts of meat to the east coast.
“Over the past year since the pandemic, we’ve had a lot of growth from other companies going out of business and merging with other people. My goal for the next year is to make sure that everything we’ve got going right now is going right.”
Bill turned to Choco’s digital solution to make order processing easier for his company and customers in two important ways: eliminating the hassle of manual order entry and supporting adoption of the Choco app by customers.
“We have a pretty loyal customer base right now. And that’s the main goal — to make sure that doesn’t change and the quality of the product remains.”
Less manual order entry saves time and stress
For William & Co. Foods, order processing without Choco is time-consuming and inefficient. Orders arrive in a variety of ways, including emails, text messages, phone calls, and late night voicemails.
“I get up at 3:30 and pull all the orders off the tape and enter them manually into the system. Same thing with emails and text messages that come in. The Choco ones are great. They’re in.”
With Choco’s ERP integration, orders placed with Choco arrive directly into William & Co. 's system. Standardized orders arrive with product IDs and delivery dates. After a quick check for accuracy, orders are ready for production. Instead of spending time taking and entering orders, Bill, sales reps and office staff can focus on the business.
“For every order that we used to get, it would be called in to myself, one of the sales people, or somebody here in the office. And every time the phone rings you have to stop what you’re doing and put the order in. Any reduction in that is a positive.”
And relieving the inconvenience of manual order entry impacts how quickly William & Co. Food can serve their customers.
“The sooner we get an order the better off, because if we have to cut 300 tenderloin steaks, it takes time. So anything helps.”
Customer outreach improves onboarding and adoption
Customer onboarding is an integral part of Choco’s offering. While incorporating a new tool into the ordering process can be intimidating, Choco’s dedicated support team leads customer adoption of our ordering app.
“The thing I like about Choco is that you do a pretty good job at getting out to see the customer. Even though I have an idea how to use the system, I wouldn’t really be able to sell it to a chef. If he asked me a question, I’d probably be lost. You guys have that ability to go in and convince them, that works.”
For William & Co. Foods, Choco offers a digital tool to take the time and hassle out of order processing. Choco’s committed team supports establishing an automated ERP integration, customer onboarding and training sales reps and staff.