NEED HELP - SELLING MOSTLY WHOLESALE, ALSO DIRECT, WANTING TO DO MORE ONLINE

[pearlskitchen]

Hi everyone, new here.

I started a Plant-Based/Vegan food side hustle a little over a year ago called Pearl's Plant Kitchen www.pearlsplantkitchen.com

Things have been growing, but now I’m trying to create some efficiencies and want to see where I could use Square to help with my growth, etc.

I have a fairly unique business model, and I’m trying really hard to figure out the best way to use technology to help automate and allow me to be in multiple places at once.

I make the food in a commercial kitchen, and then I sell directly to coffee shops, and boutiques in the area. I am also doing more direct sales to customers, and looking to move into online ordering as well. I do a lot of farmers markets and various pop ups, etc.

I do not have a storefront and I don’t intend on having one.

My biggest problems right now are:

• keeping track of inventory of goods that are made and ones ready to package - deliver
• Invoicing the stores that I sell to
• Some stores pay cash, some pay with venmo
• It would also be nice to keep track of ingredient stock, inventory
• I've noticed even changing the inventory counts in square seems convoluted 

I have a suggested retail price listed on the website, but I sell to the stores at a wholesale price and although I am trying to standardize on that currently there are some stores that have different discounting than others.

Keeping track of the items made, and ready to Deliver to the stores and then automating my invoices based on what was delivered has become challenging to say the least.

I have a couple people working for me who are constantly in the kitchen prepping and packaging so I’m trying to figure out how to start with an accurate inventory and then invoicing the stores for payment.

 Guidance or suggestions anyone might have Would be greatly appreciated.

[doc_choc]

@pearlskitchen Welcome to the Square Community. I have taken a look at your website loving the sound of the peanut butter protein bites!

The Square system is not geared for wholesale at the moment, but that doesn't mean you can not adapt some of the services and features for use in your business. Potentially you could have two stores a retail and wholesale, this may create more confusion and work though, or a micro-site or pages on your retail site that interfaces with wholesale but this would not work for online wholesale order processing. It would be great to see a wholesale feature on Square. Pop over to Ideate and make a feature request Want a new feature? Add your requests here.

As to your questions

• Square has your invoicing sorted. The system is really nifty Create and send invoices | Square Support Centre - GB
• Inventory tracking - We only put items in to stock once the goods are finished otherwise the workflow for us can get really confusing
• Venmo - not so sure about this one, there is always a new system on the block so it may not be one Square works with at the moment
• Ingredient tracking - This is in beta testing and should be heading our way once testing is completed.
• Updating Inventory - Depending on how you are interacting with Square there are different ways to adjust inventory levels, so it sounds like you haven't found the best method to suit your at the moment. We use a combination of the Dashboard from the office and POS app from the smartphone. We find via the Smartphone its a lot quicker, but it should be pretty straightforward and quick to do. I would definitely recommend taking another look at this and how you are doing it.

[zechcamp]

Hey @pearlskitchen, I was running into similar issues with keeping track of inventory of goods that are made and ones ready to package with my cookie shop. I ended up building some tools to automate some of the reporting and now I'm turning it into software for other wholesalers using Square. I'm looking at adding a feature to track of ingredient stock. 

What issues do you have around "Invoicing the stores that I sell to"? Do you find Square invoices are not working for you here? 

[eatunicookies]

Your approach is identical to my own. 

Square does not offer the solution. When looking through their services you'd have to a la carte everything and still have to build IFFT or ZAPs to work around a $220+/mo rate from Square.

We use Square in our tech stack along with other tools: Faire (wholesale), Shopify (online, subscription, *apps), and  Recipal (ingredients and recipes). This has allowed us to build out an online shopping experience that's mobile-first (desktop fluent) while appearing at markets and festivals with Square POS. 

To handle loyalty we built a simple conversion prompt is Google Sheets that converts the Square customer export into a Shopify Import. We retain customers and are able to apply their in-person points online. This is an environment workaround due to liquidity when working with contractors at certain venues. 

We're constantly testing as we find out how to stick to our ethos and story while serving our growing community. 

Square Marketing $29/mo

Shopify $39/mo + (apps $30/mo)

ReciPal $50/mo 

$150/mo investment to have our ecosystem serve our partners, fans, members, and shoppers