Greenbox: Digitizing Food Packaging Sales
Greenbox uses Choco to save time and cost with 90% of their digital orders fully automated.
of customer adoption on Choco over the last four years
of all digital orders
Greenbox was founded in Bremen, Germany in 2010. They are the first company to specialize in environmentally friendly and sustainable packaging for the foodservice industry.
Greenbox's versatile range includes take-away packaging, cutlery, cups, napkins and much more, made from sustainable raw materials such as paper, sugar cane, palm leaf, recycled or even biodegradable plastics. In addition to disposable packaging, the Greenbox range also includes sustainable reusable packaging.
We spoke with Patrick Matthies, Head of Sales at Greenbox, to talk about sustainability, digitization and keeping customers happy.
“In 2017 we were 100% climate neutral for the first time. Which means not only the CO2 of our company is fully offset, but also those of all of our products. In our industry, we have been and still are the only company that offsets all CO2 emissions associated with manufacturing, storing and transporting products for such a large product range.”
While Greenbox is the leading supplier in the green food packaging industry, they face some challenges with government regulations designed to reduce the amount of single-use packaging.
“The will of legislators to reduce single-use packaging is strong. And there’s nothing wrong with that, because single-use packaging contributes its share to waste generation. It becomes problematic for the environment if the disposable packing is neither recyclable nor biodegradable. But if you have a company whose main business purpose is to sell sustainable disposable packing, this is a challenge.”
The Challenge
To address the evolving legislation, Greenbox is continually introducing new products while acquiring customers more efficiently. They have expanded their product range to include reusable food packaging and at the same time prioritized a digital buying experience so that customers can find and order products as easily as possible. In order to keep their commitment to climate protection and continue to succeed, Greebox needs:
- To support more customers without additional strain on their customer service team
- To make it easy for customers to find additional products, including new reusable options
Related reading
The Choco Premium Solution
“Digital sales has been one of the foundations of our growth.” – Patrick Matthies
Greenbox has created a digital experience for their customers since the start. In addition to their products, the company’s e-commerce website also provides extensive information about their manufacturing, CO2 offsetting and guides on materials, new laws and regulations. Despite having their own web shop and app, Greenbox started working with Choco in 2019. They signed up for Choco Premium in 2022 to take advantage of the full sales and ordering value of Choco.
With Choco Premium, Greenbox receives:
- end-to-end support onboarding customers to Choco’s easy-to-use app
- an up-to-date digital catalog and product promotions all in one place meaning customers can find and order new products
- customers save time ordering their favorite and new products in the app
Sibel Böning, project manager for the partnership with Greenbox, added, "It is particularly important for us to have a technical connection to Choco so that we can import our customer orders directly into our ERP system via an interface. In addition, the premium package allows us to use Choco's onboarding service to offer our customers even easier access to the app."
Serving customers without any strain
“We believe that every customer is unique and has their own preferences for certain tools. different. Customers have habits. So it can sometimes be very difficult or even impossible to get them to use a particular tool.”
Greenbox started working with Choco to provide additional value to their customers with a digital tool that provides time-saving ordering along with comprehensive support for customer onboarding.
“Our order processing system is extremely automated. So in very few cases someone has to take an order and put it into the system. 85-90% of all digital orders, not a single person put a finger on it.”
Choco makes every part of order processing and selling products easier. We handle customer onboarding and an ERP integration enters orders directly into Greenbox’s system. Over the last four years, customer adoption of Choco has grown on average 40% per year for Greenbox.
Customers can find new packaging options
Thanks to Choco’s ERP integration, Greenbox saves time when updating their catalog and customers can quickly and easily find additional or new products in the same app where they place their orders.
“Displaying our entire range on Choco definitely has an impact on what customers order and how the relationship with them develops. When a digital ordering tool is used, customers come in contact with other products from the range more often. If you only order offline, you have to think a lot about how to inform your customers about new products, which requires time and additional resources. So the more digital, the better.”
Choco offers unique features that make it possible to capitalize on customers having easy access to updated catalogs and new products.
The Choco Marketing tool give Greenbox additional marketing power by allowing the company to display news and notifications exactly where customers are placing their orders. Thanks to audience segmentation, Greenbox can either reach all their customers on Choco at the same time or send specific messages to targeted groups. Product promotions, limited-time offerings and important updates can be shared directly to customers in real time.
“We will include Choco into our marketing plans. So whatever we are planning in the future, Choco and the marketing feature will be included.”
Greenbox customers choose Choco
For Greenbox’s customers, digital ordering means less time spent calling or emailing in the middle of the night to place an order.
“We hope that Choco, in addition to our other e-commerce offerings, will allow our restaurateurs to spend less time on procurement and more time on what’s important - their customers. Choco has a very sophisticated application which is very, very easy to use.”
Choco is a comprehensive tool that supports Greenbox in their digital sales and marketing.
Our customers really like the app. They like how easy it is to use. Ordering is extremely fast. That’s one of the big advantages for us and our clientele.
