North West Meat Company: Saving Hours Daily with Choco's AI

Every evening, for years, the same dreaded task awaited the team. After a long day of deliveries and customer calls, someone would have to process the day’s restaurant orders, one by one.

The orders came in from across Chicago: the bustling kitchen at Lonesome Rose in Logan Square, the polished dining room of The Bellevue in the Gold Coast, and countless pizza joints, taverns, and catering companies in between. Each would place its order for chicken breast, sirloin steak, or specialty cuts for the next day’s menu.

Then someone, often Andrew, would open the emails, listen to voicemails, and manually type each order into their system so the warehouse team could start packing at dawn.

It was tedious. It took hours. And it required intimate knowledge of more than 1,300 different SKUs. A single misstep could mean the wrong cut, the wrong grade, or a disappointed chef.

“For a family-run meat company, we had to do something,” said Neva. “Taking orders was a tedious job that ate up valuable hours every night.”

Manual Work Stole Time and Energy

North West Meat’s order entry process had become a daily bottleneck. Orders arrived through phone, voicemail, and email, each in a different format, and had to be re-entered by hand.

Even seasoned employees found it draining, while new hires struggled to learn the product catalog quickly enough to be accurate. Staffing new office roles had become more difficult since the pandemic, and wages were rising fast.

• Up to three hours a night spent on manual order entry
• Frequent mistakes from vague, freeform orders like “10 lbs of sirloin”
• Lost time that could have been spent on customer relationships or growth
  
   

OrderAgent Brings Structure to the Chaos

In 2024, North West Meat adopted OrderAgent, Choco’s AI-powered order management tool, to eliminate manual order entry and reduce errors.

OrderAgent uses AI and machine learning to read and interpret orders from any channel, including email, voicemail, and the Choco app, and automatically converts them into structured, ready-to-fulfill sales orders.

The system learns from each customer’s history, so it can recognize repeat patterns and understand “the usual.”

When catering client Jordan’s Food of Distinction called in an order for 15 pounds of sirloin, OrderAgent instantly matched the request to the correct product based on past orders: beef top butt, center-cut, prime.

“How is somebody who’s been here three months supposed to know that?” said Neva. “Now they don’t have to. OrderAgent does.”

Time Back, Fewer Errors, and Real ROI

The change was immediate. Tasks that once stretched late into the night now take minutes.

Results:

Order processing time

Reduced from 3 hours to under 1 hour per day

Annual labor savings

Estimated $22,000

Error rate

Fewer product mismatches and manual corrections

Employee impact

Faster onboarding and higher satisfaction

“This is a no-brainer. It makes our jobs easier and cuts down on tedious work.”

Why It Matters: Real AI for Real Businesses

North West Meat’s story reflects a broader truth about AI in food distribution. It is not about replacing people. It is about removing friction from the repetitive, manual tasks that take focus away from customers.

By bringing automation into a family-run business that has thrived for generations, Choco has helped North West Meat preserve its commitment to quality and service while modernizing how it operates.

What Choco Offers to Food Distributors

Choco helps food distributors digitize the entire order entry journey and focus their teams where it matters most: on customers, not admin.

• OrderAgent: Automates order capture from many channels including, email, voice, and SMS with up to 90% time savings and 99% accuracy.
• eCommerce Platform: A mobile-first ordering experience that gives customers 24/7 access to catalogs, pricing, and stock.
• SalesHub: Real-time insights to identify opportunities and strengthen customer relationships. 

Together, these solutions form the Choco Platform, an AI and technology platform that helps food distributors manage and grow their business.

A Modern Business Built on Tradition

For North West Meat, adopting OrderAgent was not just about saving time. It was about keeping a family business thriving in a changing industry.

Nearly seventy years after its founding, the company continues to deliver on its legacy of quality and personal service, now with the support of technology that helps them do it more efficiently than ever.

“Choco helps us focus on what matters most. On our customers, our team, and the quality of our products.”