case study - Plant-Based - Frozen

Modern food and beverage ERP supports growth for a fresh-frozen plant-based manufacturer

The Customer

A fast-growing, privately held plant-based food and beverage manufacturer producing fresh-frozen products, soups, and prepared meals. The company sells through national grocery retailers, direct-to-consumer ecommerce, and foodservice channels, operating from a modern production facility with strict quality and shelf-life requirements.

The Challenge

Systems that couldn’t keep pace with the business

As the company expanded its product portfolio and distribution footprint, its original systems could no longer keep pace with operational complexity. Key challenges included:

Limited visibility into true product and channel profitability

with costs tracked across spreadsheets rather than directly in the system.

Manual inventory and lot tracking

increasing risk around expiry management and recalls.

Disconnected ecommerce and retail operations

leading to inventory mismatches and fulfillment inefficiencies.

Production planning constraints

making it difficult to forecast demand and schedule batch runs efficiently.

Increasing dependence on spreadsheets

for costing, production tracking, and reporting.

Leadership recognized the need for a modern ERP that could scale with the business while supporting food-specific requirements such as batch production, shelf-life control, and traceability.

The Solution

Harvest ERP — built for food and beverage manufacturers

The company implemented Harvest ERP, a modern, cloud-based ERP designed specifically for food and beverage manufacturers, replacing disconnected accounting tools and manual processes. Harvest ERP provided:

End-to-end lot and expiry tracking

From raw ingredients through finished goods.

Integrated recipe and batch production management

Enabling accurate yields and variance tracking.

Real-time inventory visibility

Across warehouse, retail, and ecommerce channels. Including Shelf Life Dates to automate the picking for various retailors with different demands.

True landed cost and margin analysis

By SKU, product family, and sales channel.

Native integration with Shopify ecommerce

Eliminating manual order re-entry between commerce and operations.

Scalable reporting and dashboards

For operations, finance, and leadership — with Power BI included out of the box.

The solution was implemented in phases to minimize disruption, with a focus on rapid user adoption and clean data migration.

The Results

Operational and financial improvements within months

Within months of go-live, the manufacturer achieved measurable operational and financial improvements:

Improved inventory accuracy & expiry management

reducing write-offs and emergency production runs

Full traceability & recall readiness

meeting the expectations of major retail partners

Clear margin visibility

enabling data-driven pricing and product mix decisions

Faster production planning

supporting continued SKU and volume growth

Less spreadsheet dependency

freeing staff to focus on higher-value work

Why It Works

Most importantly, Harvest ERP gave leadership confidence that their core systems would support future growth, rather than limit it. Built specifically for food and beverage manufacturers, the platform brings the operational depth this customer’s complexity demands — without the integration project that comes with retrofitting a generalist ERP into a food and beverage business.