Before using the Woolworths integration in Upstock, the team at Almighty Drinks was juggling far too many moving parts to get their organic juices and sparkling waters to the supermarkets.
Fulfilling its growing number of Woolworths orders was a dreaded operation. Almighty’s head of Product and Operations, Libby Bramwell says to avoid errors, the multi-step process required careful navigation.
“Before Upstock, we’d get an email notification that orders were placed in the portal. Then copy and paste all the information from their portal into our stock management system and then add each product by line-by-line, then send that to our warehouse, dispatch it, track it and go back into their portal to manually create the invoice.”
Libby says there were so many moving parts and opportunities for errors to creep in.
“You’d have to put aside an hour and a half out of your day to process all the orders and then make sure you hadn't missed something. Now with Upstock, those errors are gone.”
Getting products onto supermarket shelves has become effortless with the Woolworths integration in Upstock.
“Before we had to use a lot of mental bandwidth to process orders. Now I barely need to review them, because we know they’ll be right. We just hit ‘Approve’ and we’re done. The fact that it integrates around 60-70 direct-to-store orders per week, instead of having to do that manually, is a game changer.”
Libby believes having a seamless ordering process reflects well on Almighty’s brand too.
“Upstock’s seamless processes reflects well on our brand. When our customers are buying our drinks through Upstock and getting a good experience they think that we're contributing to that as well…But that’s Upstock making us look good, we’re just sending the drinks!”
More from our chat with Almighty’s, Libby Bramwell
What does your team think of Upstock?
We all come from very strong hospo backgrounds, so we all understand the benefit of it and we really see the value of being a supplier on it. We all would have used it if we were on the other side doing our buying. And yes, if I had had something like Upstock when I was managing a restaurant, I would have been all over it.
Upstock has saved you tons of time and stress on orders, but what are some of the more unexpected benefits?
We’ve had new customers come to us via the sample store. Customers who we would not necessarily have thought to seek out. We’ve got a lot of corporates that want to offer a better beverage choice to their employees and visitors. They don’t want to have a vending machine full of the usual brands of sugary fizz or energy drinks; they're looking for something else that hits the spot but is better for you. It’s been great, we’re now supplying an orthodontist clinic, pilates studios and auto mechanics workshops.
Tell us about your business and your brand?
We're a New Zealand-made drinks company. We like to make healthy alternatives for everyday drinks. So we make a range of five different organic juices. We've got six flavoured sparkling waters, and then we've got three caffeinated sparkling waters. Our brand is about encouraging a balanced lifestyle. We're all for everyone having a beer and having a party, but then also getting up to go for that morning walk as well. We do love a drink too, but sometimes it's good to go; one Pals, one Almighty, and then the day after is a lot easier. No sweeteners, no sugar, so your teeth don't hurt the next day. We also have a strong community focus for our company. We give a percentage of our sales back to sustainability education in primary schools and we are all very much encouraged to live a healthy and sustainable lifestyle.
See all the benefits of Upstock for drinks suppliers
Order wholesale from Almighty Drinks today
