Challenge
Located in the heart of Brooklyn, NY, Puerto Plata Seafood Market operates a busy wholesale operation providing fresh seafood to white-linen restaurants and other retail establishments. The company also operates a successful 24/7 retail market and a food truck featuring local and imported seafood.
As Puerto Plata Seafood expanded operations, the company faced significant challenges with inventory management and order accuracy. Without proper inventory tracking systems, the business struggled with frequent cooler mis-picks, inaccurate inventory counts, and incorrect customer shipments. Additionally, managing margins across their diverse product line and multiple locations was difficult without real-time visibility into inventory levels. Manual, paper-based purchasing processes were error-prone and time-consuming, impacting both operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Solution
Puerto Plata Seafood implemented Food Connex, which provided an integrated platform for inventory management and order processing. Since the company was already using QuickBooks, Food Connex was simple to integrate, eliminating the need for complex system migrations.
The Food Connex team worked closely with Puerto Plata to assign unique item codes to each inventory item and organized the inventory into logical groupings. This systematic approach ensured that only orders and inventory transfers referencing specific item codes are processed, eliminating ambiguity and reducing errors. With Food Connex, Puerto Plata can view every item across multiple freezer and warehouse locations in real-time, trace products back to the specific customer who received them, and monitor margins on every sale.
Results
- Organized inventory with item codes improves product picking accuracy
- Real-time visibility into inventory across multiple freezer and warehouse locations
- Immediate updates to orders and inventory transfers for 100% accuracy
- Eliminated paper-based purchasing processes
- Complete product traceability from storage to customer delivery
- Accurate margin monitoring on every sale
- Fast implementation: two new warehouse locations operational within 90 days
- Seamless QuickBooks integration with no system migration required
The Impact
Key Features Used
- Item code management for organized inventory
- Multi-location inventory visibility (freezers and warehouses)
- Real-time order entry and processing
- Product traceability and delivery tracking
- QuickBooks integration for accounting accuracy
- Margin monitoring and reporting
- Immediate inventory update synchronization
