by Whether you sell directly to customers or support local restaurants, grocers, and other businesses — e-commerce is a great way to increase sales for your farm store.
When it comes to e-commerce for food suppliers, not all solutions are up to snuff. Food producers have unique inventory and selling requirements that other industries don’t have to deal with. Finding an industry-appropriate e-commerce solution can be a challenge.
We’re here to help. With years of experience working directly with farmers and other food suppliers, we have some unique insights into:
- Key features of a great food supplier e-commerce solution
- Top e-commerce providers based on different business needs
Ready to find the right e-commerce solution for your food supply business? Let’s get started.
Food Supplier E-Commerce: Most Important Features
Before diving headfirst into providers, it’s important to understand what separates a general retail e-commerce solution and one that’s built for food sales.
Unlike a retailer selling general products, food suppliers need to use systems that support the sale of highly variable and perishable goods.
Selling food online has strict compliance requirements that other industries don’t have to worry about. Farm-to-fork customers and other local businesses also have high standards when it comes to choosing online food suppliers. Both put extra demand on local food businesses to be transparent with their processes to stay relevant and compliant.
Related Read: 5 E-Commerce Food Trends for 2024 (+ Tips To Leverage Them)
When you evaluate e-commerce solutions, look for these features as a baseline:
- Sell by weight functionality: No two cuts of meat, no two bags of peppers, or any two freshly caught fish will weigh exactly the same. Use an e-commerce platform that lets you easily add exact weights to an order and update inventory accordingly. Selling unique cuts or produce by fixed weight might be easier, but it’s bad for your bottom line and not ideal for customers.
- Transparent pricing and descriptions: Many food suppliers sell in bulk, making it important to have transparent pricing on your website, including estimated weight, shipping costs, and more. Also, use a website builder that supports detailed item descriptions so you can demonstrate the quality of your products and business practices.
- Efficient shipping and delivery: Time is of the essence when shipping perishable goods. In addition to following packing best practices, make sure you partner with an e-commerce platform that supports reliable and quick delivery wherever your customers are.
- Subscription-based selling: Both retail and business customers enjoy the option to subscribe and save on bulk orders. Use an online selling solution that natively supports subscriptions and lets you specify which items are supported for subscriptions.
- Robust inventory management: Working with primarily perishable products adds complexity to managing your goods in storage. The best e-commerce solutions also integrate or natively support inventory management tools that provide real-time visibility into current stock levels so you can fulfill orders efficiently and avoid spoilage.
While some e-commerce platforms support industry-specific features like sell by weight with add-ons or at higher pricing tiers, we recommend looking for solutions that support these features out of the box. That ensures you’ll get everything you need to effectively run an online food supply business without the need for complex or expensive customization.
E-Commerce for Food Suppliers: 4 Top Options
Even the term “food supplier” can mean a lot of things to different people. Are you a food wholesaler looking to connect with local grocers – or maybe a small family farm looking to supply local restaurants or sell directly to consumers?
The right e-commerce platform for your food supply business depends on who your customers are and your business goals.
To help make your life easier, we’ve compiled a list of top e-commerce for food suppliers based on business size, type, and unique features.
1. Grazecart
Built by farmers, for farmers, our industry-specific solution is designed to empower small, independent farmers, butchers, and food suppliers. We focus primarily on helping small food suppliers stay competitive with advanced but user-friendly e-commerce, inventory management, and more.
Best For
Independent farms, meat shops, and fishmongers.
Unique Features
GrazeCart was built to handle common perishable food-selling challenges like managing catch weight inventory, offering subscriptions, and more. Some of our unique features include:
- Built-in sell by weight: GrazeCart’s sell by weight function doesn’t require a deposit but still collects and validates card information so orders are processed accurately at checkout.
- Automated receipts: Receipts for final purchases are sent when orders are fulfilled with actual weights and values included automatically.
- Built-in subscription support: Subscriptions make it easy for customers to order at regular intervals and are great for building recurring revenue. Add subscription discounts to encourage upselling and specify which products are (and aren’t) eligible for subscription.
- User-friendly website builder: Limit the need for IT support with simple drag-and-drop website design tools. Our no-code solution lets you launch a mobile-friendly, optimized e-commerce website quickly.
- Pickup and nationwide delivery: Scale your online business with support for both local pickups and national delivery. Set delivery limits that automatically exclude customers in zip codes you don’t support.
- Advanced inventory and fulfillment: GrazeCart natively supports real-time inventory tracking, weight-based stock levels, and other inventory functions that food suppliers need to optimize stock levels.
- Customer loyalty and promotion tools: Encourage repeat business with customer loyalty programs, custom sales pages, discount codes, and other features to make your website stand out.
Pricing
We offer several custom pricing tiers along with a 14-day free trial of our e-commerce tools.
2. Freshline
Freshline focuses on helping food producers and suppliers navigate the challenges of a digital world. Starting as a B2B solution for seafood distribution, they recently expanded into wholesale operations.
Best For
Growing food wholesalers and distributors moving into online retail sales.
Unique Features
Freshline is a powerful e-commerce tool for rapidly growing food production businesses and wholesalers. They have a powerful list of scalable features, including:
- Combined wholesale and consumer online sales: Combine your wholesale inventory and orders into a single backend, making it easier to manage different types of orders from one place.
- Automated picking and packing sheets: Automatically create order lists for items you need to prepare, and filter orders by date range or service zone.
- Custom price list: Create online catalogs for wholesale with individual or group-based price lists.
- Sell by weight support: Freshline lets you take deposits to guarantee payments and then reconcile actual product weight when an order is packaged.
Pricing
Freshline offers flexible pricing points that are charged by warehouse, but specific prices aren’t currently listed on their site. Their most popular plan is the advanced plan.
3. B2B Wave
B2B Wave is a powerful platform for B2B e-commerce, serving food distributors and wholesalers. With offices around the world, B2B Wave is a great option for large food wholesalers who primarily sell to other businesses and who have existing inventory and accounting systems.
Best For
Food businesses that are rapidly expanding to offer national and international sales online.
Unique Features
As its name implies, B2B Wave is built primarily with business-to-business sales in mind, with powerful options for wholesalers including support for sales teams.
- Simplified reorders: Customers can reorder past orders with a simple reorder feature built directly into your website.
- Customizable order status: B2B Wave allows you to set custom order status such as “invoiced” and “being prepared” so you can let customers know exactly what part of the process their order is in.
- Built-in customer communication hub: Communicate with customers directly from B2B Wave without having to manage a separate inbox.
- Integrations for inventory and invoicing: B2B Wave supports many software integrations to connect your orders to your inventory and invoicing systems.
Pricing
B2B Wave’s Pro plan starts at $295/month with custom enterprise-level options available.
4. IT Retail
IT Retail was built by retailers and grocers to provide powerful functions for both in-store and online sales. With a focus on butchers, grocers, and meat markets, IT Retail has industry-specific features to support more traditional food markets.
Best For
Small to mid-size grocers and meat markets extending their brick-and-mortar operations to online sales.
Unique Features
IT Retail primarily caters to organic food shops, grocers, delis, and meat markets, and features include:
- Scale integrations: IT Retail integrates with many types of scales to support catch weight sales.
- Built-in e-commerce: IT Retail makes it easy to migrate a brick-and-mortar store online with connected inventory, partnerships with Mercato and other delivery services, and shipping support.
- Advanced inventory management: Easily manage a wide variety of perishable inventory with real-time inventory tracking and alerts.
- Powerful reporting: IT retail supports a wide array of reporting tools for historical sales data to uncover peak demand, customer preferences, and more.
Pricing
IT Retail has three pricing levels, the lowest starting at $69/month. They also offer custom pricing based on your needs.
Find an E-Commerce Solution That’s the Right Fit for Your Business
At GrazeCart, we know that no two food producers are alike and that no software solution is right for everyone. We make it a point to only recommend GrazeCart to businesses that we think are a good fit for our platform. That way, we can focus more on serving our customers and innovating in the areas they care about most.
Regardless of what e-commerce platform you use, make sure you don’t rush into a purchase. Have a list of short and long-term goals along with some questions in mind before you demo any product. All the advanced features in the world won’t matter if they don’t make sense for how you want to do business (or if they’re too complex to actually use).
GrazeCart is used by farms and meat producers across the country to seamlessly bring their business online. Supported by sophisticated inventory management and industry-specific selling options like subscriptions and sell by weight, GrazeCart is equipped to handle your e-commerce needs and grow together with your business.
Try a free 14-day trial to see what GrazeCart can do or talk to one of our food supply e-commerce experts today.