Bear State Kitchen purchases BME Web to scale up production of their sauces, soups, dressings, marinades, and bases

Bear State Kitchen produces a variety of mouthwatering sauces that pack a punch to versatile condiments that enhance the flavor profile of any dish. The company was founded five years ago with a passion for food production and restaurant operations. With the increasing popularity of outsourced products in the foodservice industry, coupled with the interest in diverse and international cuisines, Bear State Kitchen has been experiencing growing demand for their products from local restaurants to national food retailers since opening its doors.

Today, Bear State Kitchen runs two production facilities with over 60 employees and employs BatchMaster Software’s add-on food manufacturing application, BME Web, to manage recipe and packaging development, inventory, planning & scheduling, batch production, quality, compliance, and warehousing. BME Web is also responsible for managing sales orders and purchase orders. This BatchMaster Software application is seamlessly integrated to QuickBooks, which manages Bear State Kitchen’s AR, AP, GL and invoicing processes.

CHALLENGES

Bear State Kitchen has employed Restaurant 365 to manage recipes, inventory, and financials for the past five years. For BOL’s, PO’s, quality, and other production / warehousing related activities the company has utilized the Google suite.

Significant growth over the past five years brought on a host of challenges and complexities that were not being properly managed by their disparate systems. With the increased scale of operations, the need for streamlined communication, collaboration, and data management become critical. Stricter regulatory and compliance requirements from customers and the FDA, put additional pressure on the staff to report on quality metrics, and respond to product traceability mandates.

With the company opening of a second product plant, management recognized it was time to find a tightly integrated software solution to effectively manage their operations, with an emphasis on managing inventory, batch production, and warehousing.

“After adding an additional facility, and more equipment, we were at an inflection point of hiring more staff,” said Kirk Plummer, Operations Partner. “We felt that upgrading our software solution would allow us to do more with the resources we currently had.”

SOFTWARE SELECTION

Bear State Kitchen management considered full ERP solutions, as well as integrated solutions consisting of a financial app and a manufacturing app during the evaluation process. Several vendor applications were evaluated, including Sage, Intuit QuickBooks, BatchMaster Software, QT9 and Dassault Systèmes DELMIAWorks (formerly IQMS).

Ultimately, Bear State Kitchen’s management selected the integrated solution consisting of BatchMaster Software’s BME Web and Intuit’s QuickBooks application. Management determined that this ‘best of breed’ solution offered the greatest value to the company, and that BatchMaster’s BME Web application was the clear choice in terms of supporting their food manufacturing operations.

“As the complexities of our operations have evolved over the last five years, purchasing BME Web and QuickBooks was the right choice to streamline our processes, enhance user productivity, and ensure seamless coordination across all departments,” explained Kirk Plummer, Operations Partner. “We felt there was a level of simplicity behind the software from BatchMaster, we saw the software was built in a way that supported our processes right out of the box.”

SOLUTION

BatchMaster Software’s manufacturing application, BME Web, is currently being implemented by Bear State Kitchen to run their two production facilities. The software application specifically addresses the challenges faced by food producers of dressings, sauces, and seasonings, including the following:

Shelf Stability & Preservatives – R&D and Batch Production capabilities to maintain the freshness of products, while achieving the optimal shelf life, limiting the use of preservatives, and meeting consumer demand for natural or clean-label products.

“We appreciated the synergy between our current processes and what BME has to offer, because it is in line with our current systems, we will be able to streamline and automate our workflows,” said Kirk Plummer, Operations Partner

Consistency in Flavor & Quality – Inventory Management and Batch Production capabilities to achieve consistent flavor quality in each batch of product, based upon the natural variations in the available ingredient inventories.

Scale Up Production – Planning & Scheduling capabilities to forecast batch jobs and any required purchase orders, as well as maximizing the utilization of production equipment and labor thanks to order consolidation opportunities.

Kirk Plummer, Operations Partner explained, “With BME Web, we will gain control over our perpetual inventory. We will know on hand and allocated inventory, and with the advanced planning and scheduling tools, we will know what inventory is needed and when it is needed.”

Quality & Food Safety – Quality Management capabilities to establish rigorous QC tests and QA procedures; capturing and reporting on received raw materials and produced finished goods.

Lot Traceability – Lot Management capabilities that enable companies to achieve and sustain an advanced food safety certification, exceeding BRC and SQF traceability and recall codes, and even customer specific requirements.

“We must respond to internal, and 3rd party mock recall audits in 2 hours or less. With BME Web, we expect to comply with product traceability and recall codes in a matter of minutes,” stated Kirk Plummer, Operations Partner.

Pricing – Cost Analysis capabilities that consider the cost and quality of seasonal ingredients, plus consumables, labor, margins, and other miscellaneous costs to estimate the cost of finished goods.

Kirk Plummer, Operations Partner describes how the BatchMaster solution overcame the challenges of using Restaurant 365 and worksheets to determine pricing, “Using BME Web Formulation and Costing features, we will be able to better analyze and determine pricing by defining cost parameters, setting margins, estimating recipe and product costs, and capturing actual costs.”

EXPECTATIONS

By managing Bear State Kitchen’s key business processes, including sales, purchasing, manufacturing, and warehousing, BME Web will provide all departments with real-time insights, enabling the staff to make more informed decisions that will sustain the company’s continued growth. The application will enable Bear State Kitchen to adapt to consumers’ evolving tastes and quickly scale up operations to meet increased demand.

“Partnering with BatchMaster Software was a crucial step toward meeting our growth objectives and maintaining the high-quality standards we’ve set.” – Kirk Plummer, Operations Partner.