Country Fare
Food & beverage wholesaler boosts growth by 21%
The Sugar effect
21%
growth from spotting issues and uncovering opportunities
~20%
reduction in time spent on data analysis and reporting
80-90%
customer retention rate
Since 2004, this independent, family-run business has built a reputation for quality, reliability, and personal service in a fast-moving industry. They provide over 700 restaurants, cafés, and caterers across southern England with roughly 4,500 food and beverage products on offer.
Challenge
Country Fare handles around 500 orders every day, packing up an average of 12,000 individual items.
Accurate, up-to-date sales data is crucial to keeping up with this pace. Initially, Country Fare tracked its sales operation manually. Employees spent hours entering data by hand, only for information to quickly become outdated.
Country Fare couldn’t get a detailed view of its sales data, making it hard to analyze trends, spot opportunities, and react to shifts in demand and supply.
Solution
To solve this, Country Fare needed a smarter way to track sales and gain deeper insights into customer buying patterns. Country Fare chose sales-i.
Today, every sales representative starts their day by reviewing sales figures. They look at each customer’s spending patterns – whether they have increased or decreased spending or stopped buying a particular product.
If a customer’s overall spending remains stable but they’ve stopped ordering dairy, for instance, that signals that a competitor may have stepped in.
“Much of our success with current customers is only possible because of the data we get from sales-i. It’s become so ingrained in our daily work as account managers that not having it would be like a construction worker missing a hammer or screwdriver.”
– Gareth Roberts, Account Manager
Going beyond better selling
Country Fare also relies on sales-i to monitor profi t margins. With fresh produce prices changing daily, sales-i flags any products at risk of being sold below cost, allowing the company to adjust pricing immediately and prevent losses.
Easier access to data
Finally, Country Fare uses sales-i to provide detailed spending reports for customers who request them. With an automated, centralized, reliable platform, Country Fare sales representatives save on average 20% of their time on data analysis and reporting.
Having a granular, real-time view of sales gives Country Fare a competitive edge in customer interactions. “We now go into meetings extremely prepared. We know exactly what the customer is buying and if they’ve had changes in their spending habits. We’re always ahead of the conversation, which lets us build con fidence and demonstrate real value to customers,” notes Roberts.
This had let to customer retention of 80-90%, and annual growth of ~21%.
