In the beautiful Kumeu countryside Boric brothers, Franco and Stefan are third-generation caretakers of their family orchard which they’ve expanded into the popular local specialty market Boric Food Market. To provide the best and freshest selection, Co-owner Franco Boric likes to keep a step ahead of his ordering with a quick run around the shop floor, checking what he needs and getting the job done fast.
“Before Upstock ordering was time-consuming. There were a lot of emails back and forth, opening spreadsheets, downloading documents, going into different portals trying to figure out what suppliers had on offer.”
Now with Upstock, he’s got automated ordering in the palm of his hand.
“I do 90% of the ordering in the shop, so I need everything in one place and on one app where I can run through all my suppliers and their listings and go ‘Okay, I need this, I need that, what are the cut-off times? With Upstock on my phone, I can just go ‘bang, bang, bang’ and it's all done within minutes.”
Franco found Upstock when one of his suppliers got him using it. Now he’s trying to convert everyone he buys from to make ordering easier all round.
“I'm trying to literally get as many of my suppliers onto it as I can. And I say to those thinking about Upstock ‘you're more likely to get more orders from me’.”
Franco says he’s also more likely to place larger orders from suppliers on Upstock because he can see all of the products they have listed, not just his regular favourites.
“Another benefit of Upstock is I might go into an existing supplier and then scroll down and realise, ‘Hey, there are 20 more products I could be ordering from them!’. So the supplier is getting bigger orders and I'm getting new products into my store. It's a win, win.”
As they say, time is money and Franco’s reinvesting the hours saved into growing the business.
“Now I’m able to spend more time looking at staffing, promotions, and new suppliers within Upstock. So it's been really valuable.”
More from out chat with Franco Boric
What do your customers love about Boric Food Market?
I guess our real point of difference is the setting. Our market is right here in the orchard. For example, we can be picking apples in the morning, and an hour later they are on the shelf for the customer to buy, as well as all the other fruit. And we also have a market gardener on site who grows a lot of vegetables. So I guess that's our unique offering, the produce isn't going to a market down the line somewhere, sitting in a factory for a week and then getting shipped back up. It's literally from the orchard to your basket.
How has Upstock improved your workflow?
It's much better now for traceability, because if I'm away our team can log into the system and be like, ‘Is this product coming in? When is it due? Did Franco order it yet? How long ago?' So that helps with communication within the team. If a customer has a query, we can tell them straight away, 'Hey, look, we ordered it three days ago, it's coming in tomorrow.’ Upstock offers that transparency for the whole team and certainty for our customers.
How does Upstock help you to discover new brands and products?
I'm always scrolling through Upstock, if I've got a spare minute, and if I see a new product that's popped up online, or it's in the news, or it's had an article written about in the paper, I'll jump on Upstock to see if it is in there. If it is, I'll connect to the suppliers. I do that quite regularly. At least weekly I'll get one or two new suppliers and see what they've got to offer, it’s great.
