French Truck Coffee is a coffee roasting company based in New Orleans, Louisiana. The company’s roots began in 2009 when co-owner Geoffrey Meeker received a bag of coffee beans roasted only two days prior. The freshness and myriad of flavors in the cup was an unforgettable experience and one that sparked the creation of French Truck Coffee.
Today, along with co-owner and Director of Coffee, Bobby Winston, French Truck Coffee has more than 10 cafés and roasteries across Louisiana and Tennessee. Additionally, the company serves as the wholesale coffee supplier for a multitude of coffee shops, restaurants, bakeries, and more.
Naturally, as the company began to grow, a few challenges popped up—including a confusing ordering process and muddled accounting practices. To continue its growth trajectory, French Truck Coffee needed a software solution that:
- Streamlined wholesale ordering operations
- Synced directly with their accounting software
- Optimized inventory management for production, fulfillment, and retail processes
The solution? RoasterTools.
We spoke to Bobby Winston, Director of Coffee, to discover how implementing RoasterTools has improved French Truck Coffee’s wholesale and internal operations.
Disjointed Wholesale Ordering Leads to Internal Confusion
Before implementing RoasterTools in January 2022, Bobby explains that French Truck used a centralized ordering inbox for wholesale orders. Customers were able to email, text, or leave a voicemail to place a bulk coffee order.
“Our long-standing customers just wanted to text you their order because that's how they did it eight years ago. And, we have some people emailing the orders inbox, we had some people calling our voicemail ordering system.”
While multiple ordering sources caused some challenges internally, it was the informal language used to communicate those orders that resulted in major challenges.
“People would call and leave their order over the phone, going into detail about what coffee they wanted. They’d say ‘I’d like eight bags of a Breakfast Blend, five pounds bags of another coffee.’ They would use this kind of informal language, so if we had new staff on the production team it would create a hurdle. And sometimes you couldn’t even hear customers properly on the voicemail.”
Additionally, French Truck Coffee has 10+ cafés around Louisiana and Tennessee. However, Winston noted the company was not invoicing these locations properly for coffee leading to accounting errors.
“We didn't quite have a clear visual of the (product) cost of some of our shops.”
Pro Tip 👉If you are a roaster with multiple café locations, make sure you charge each shop as a wholesale customer. Not only does this prevent accounting headaches in the future, but it also provides you with transparent data on coffee costs and the inventory trends of your shops.
As the company continued to grow, Bobby and the team knew they needed to get a better handle on their wholesale ordering processes. After an employee suggested they look into RoasterTools, the French Truck Coffee crew was thrilled to find a tool that met their exact needs.
Adding Transparency and Efficiency to Every Order With RoasterTools
By implementing RoasterTools into their processes, French Truck Coffee was able to accomplish two specific goals:
- Provide clarity and structure to wholesale orders from customers
- Obtain a better understanding of internal café inventory needs and costs
Streamlining Wholesale Ordering
RoasterTools provides roasters with an online wholesale ordering portal, customized for each customer. Now, instead of dealing with multiple emails, texts, and even voicemails, customers can easily place an order online through the portal.
“Our external accounts are placing orders on RoasterTools, which now acts like a sophisticated version of our old ordering inbox. This presents the customer with a kind of a cleaner look. And, we don't have to rely on emails, text, or voice messages. Customers can order right off their phone relatively quickly.”
Additionally, the French Truck production team can now save time on invoicing these clients thanks to RoasterTools syncing directly with QuickBooks.
“With just a few clicks, our orders and invoices go from pending to ready to fulfilled.”
With this new ordering system in place, French Truck Coffee enjoys:
- Far greater clarity in ordering and production needs
- Automatic accounting transparency
- Time saved with automatic invoicing
- Optimized internal production processes
- Streamlined onboarding for training new production staff
“RoasterTools just makes it easier in terms of training. If we have new people, we don’t have to train them on a whole different invoicing system.”
Understanding Operational Costs for Retail Cafés
By having each French Truck Coffee café order beans and other necessary inventory such as syrups, ingredients, merchandise, and cleaning supplies, the company was able to obtain a firm grasp on their financial health.
“Our accountants sync the orders with QuickBooks at the end of each month and balance it out so these transactions don’t muddle things up. Otherwise, we’d be like ‘Oh wow, we had $400,000 in sales this month!’ when in reality, three-quarters of that is us passing along café costs at the end of the month.
A secondary benefit to maintaining a solid inventory of café items through RoasterTools is the ability to see which cafés have a firm grasp on inventory management, and which may need further assistance.
“One of the best uses of RoasterTools for us is having an order sheet invoice for our [production] team to print when they're fulfilling cafe orders and retail location orders, as opposed to trying to fulfill it via an old email or a spreadsheet. This is just a lot cleaner and allows the production guys downstairs to just rip through all the items they need. And then upon receiving, the cafes can clearly and neatly check off what they received. So the software provided us some structure there.”
French Truck Coffee Recommends RoasterTools to New Roasters
After implementing RoasterTools into their production processes and improving both wholesale ordering and internal accounting systems, would French Truck Coffee recommend the software to other companies? Bobby says, “Absolutely!”
“If someone's starting a roastery, absolutely. For those making the switch from another software, it may be a bit more of an internal heavy lift, but it's beneficial and worth it.”
Bobby continued, mentioning how easy and seamless the onboarding process was.
“Jon was available all the time for us and was very patient as we got our team and processes up to speed with RoasterTools. I have confidence that if I send RoasterTools a question, typically within 24 hours someone has responded and pointed us in the right direction.”
Wondering if RoasterTools is a good fit for your roasting company? Sign up for a free trial or contact us to learn more!
