A major news story on how Upstock is making it much easier for local, artisan food producers to get their products into supermarkets in this article Solving the 'nightmare' of getting more Kiwi niche foods on supermarket shelves
Here are a few snippets that explain why it's so hard to get products onto supermarket shelves and how Upstock is helping.
Upstock is enabling small, artisan food producers access to the ‘holy grail’ of supermarket shelves.
For many small food and beverage producers, getting their products on supermarket shelves is key to business success.
But Mark Davey, general manager of Wellington brewery Waitoa Beer said the process of being accepted could be a “nightmare”.
“Every grocery store has their own on-boarding requirements new products need to go through. The various requirements are similar, but are also specific to each of the stores. It can get a little niggly,” Davey said.
Software business Upstock aimed to make it easier for small businesses to sell to supermarkets, and for supermarkets to buy from them.
For years large multinational corporates, like Coca-Cola, spent millions building their own similar software. But Upstock had put that technology in the hands of Kiwi businesses, he said.
“Upstock gives local business a functionality arguably better than the multinationals have access to, but at a cost shared across thousands of businesses,” Fierlinger said.
While a business would pay a minimum of $10,000 to build a bespoke ordering system, and over $1000 a month for subscription and maintenance fees, Upstock offered its software for $1 per order.
You can read more about how Waitoa and Farm Fresh South have both found huge success using Upstock.
We’re not just helping artisan producers stock supermarket shelves – Upstock is an entirely new channel to market, so producers can get their products in front of thousands of foodservice buyers nationally and internationally. And we give them the logistics systems to cope with all the new customer growth, the increased demand and higher order volumes. As the story explains, the big suppliers spend millions of dollars to have systems that do all that – but on Upstock small producers only pay $1 per order - an absolute game changer for those businesses and the industry.
