MEAT+POULTRY - November 2024 - 37

and also distributes Piedmontese beef to
Chicago and offers customers a dry aged beef
program. Pork comes from Indiana Kitchen
and Seaboard Farms. Veal is purchased from a
Dutch producer, and lamb comes from either
Colorado or Western Pennsylvania.
As a successful, small, family-owned
business entering into an ever-changing meat
processing industry, Northwest Meat Company
realized it needed something to maintain its
position with its customer base and within the
industry without depleting its margins.
INCORPORATING AUTOMATION AND AI
Until the recent past, Northwest Meat Co. filled
its orders the traditional way. Customers called
during business hours, gave their order to a
person on the other end who then manually
entered the order into the company's ERP
(enterprise resource planning) system. The
order printed out and was filled.
Northwest Meat also took orders via
email and an after-hours voicemail. Those
orders were processed in the same manner
the following business day. That procedure
takes two precious resources, time and labor.
Neva and the company decided to partner
with Berlin-based Choco, which has an office
in Chicago. Choco is an online platform that
enables restaurants and their suppliers to
mutually streamline their order processes.
" If we are going to remain relevant, and if
we want to continue to do things, and we're
going to continue to feed the world, because
if we get behind the curve of technology, it's
going to be bad, " Neva said. " We had to act. So
that's why I really partnered with this because
it was essential to my operations. "
The time savings on order processing
Choco provides are significant.
" It takes a long time, and it gets harder
and harder to find people willing to process
them, " Neva said. " It's going to take an hour
and a half, two hours. You'd be surprised how
fast it is. I did it the other night. I was done in
20 minutes. "
Neva discovered Choco through one of
Northwest Meat's sales reps who was pitched
while working part time at a restaurant. She
told Neva about it, and Neva was impressed.
" So, I started sitting down and talking with
them, and it turns out they literally just set
up shop in Chicago, " he said. " We might have
www.meatpoultry.com | 11.24 | MEAT+POULTRY 37
been one of their first-ever contacts on the
wholesale side. "
During the construction and integration
of Choco and Northwest Meat's systems,
Northwest Meats and Neva, provided Choco
the opportunity to create a template for
American wholesalers and distributors because
the European models Choco dealt with differ
from those in the United States.
" It kind of was like an organic kind of thing,
like we just kind of crossed paths, and we
just kind of hit it off, " Neva said. " And now it's
kind of led to, you know, they're doing this AI
automation, they're doing payments, they're
doing many different things. "
The integration between Choco's system
and Northwest Meat's ERP system took some
time and was tedious. Choco had to pull all
the item codes, and Northwest Meat had to
make sure they were correct, and software to
allow the two systems to communicate had to
be developed.
HOW IT WORKS
There are four different ways Northwest
Meat Company takes an order, and Choco
handles three of them. There's the original
way, a customer calls during business hours
and an employee writes down and enters the
order. The second is through email, the third
is voicemail and the last order entry method is
through the Choco app.
" Every time
you keep
hitting confirm,
confirm,
confirm, it's
just continuing
to gather
and gather
more data. "
- ANDREW NEVA
http://www.meatpoultry.com
MEAT+POULTRY - November 2024

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