Chex Finer Foods | Customer Testimonial

Michael Isenberg, VP, Chex Finer Foods

Full transcript:

My name is Mike Isenberg from Chex Finer Foods. We’re a third-generation family-owned, especially natural food distributor, grown to about a hundred employees, we’re throughout the east coast. We have about 750 buyers on Pepperi so that ranges from supermarkets to specialty stores and farm markets. We’re a regional supplier. We have about five thousand SKU’s, we have reps in different states throughout New England, New York, and New Jersey. We also have merchandisers that go and take the orders and then we have our sales managers and key account managers. We’ve been with Pepperi for about a year now officially; we had a really quick and great start starting in about March 2021. It’s really been a game changer overall for our company. We’ve really been able to take our sales offerings to the next level. We looked into Magento, Big Commerce, and Zoe, but doing a custom build with Magento, Big Commerce was too much for us. It would have been too big of a budget, too complicated. We did put together a spec sheet which I think Pepperi did a great job working with. We went live in 90 days. I had a really great experience.

I wanted to talk about what I felt are the most impactful features. The thing that ironically has been most impactful for me is the more complete FTP/Pricing integration. So what became more multi-dimensional is actually having really custom things that we could build out with the windows FTP. So it’s kind of a sweet spot for me that I really never knew about that we were able to put in our rankings, our top sellers, it made the attributes easier, the item information easier. So it really made Pepperi a more multi-dimensional platform.

The other thing is the pricing, which I wanted to appreciate the Pepperi team for encouraging us to make the leap of faith that you can integrate pricing. So we have our chain and our customer pricing that, you know, we kind of use on pre-existing lists, but we update that daily and that’s been a game changer. But you know there are some items that you can order by half case and we’re able to set that up with Pepperi so it scans directly to the case and then you can offer the half case or the half cases are offered. There’s a variety of places that you can do that. That was helpful for us. So we do have the app on the app store which is great. Just being offered Chex app makes it more unique.

The thing that I think has been great is the syncing. Now we’re able to set those up, sync all our files multiple times per week or daily. Being able to put together multiple views is helpful. We were able to add more information. I was able to put last order date, last quantity, I had a nice medium view with our case and our pricing. I was able to put “in stock,” “low stock,” “no stock,” and then our reps could actually see our exact inventory. When I looked at the same results that increased 11% over the same time period, 14% in terms of item offerings, the discovery and the sales have increased.

We did do a rep survey back in February where they did kind of their ratings of their overall satisfaction contributing to our business, improvements, and they really felt that it was a good service. But all our independent reps, all our sales processes, really work through Pepperi. But yeah, Pepperi is kind of our day-to-day, it’s the heart of our business. Now what we offer through Pepperi I think is truly above and beyond some of our other distributors. A lot of our distributors we’re competing against are billion-dollar companies that have their own platforms and I think we built a better platform because we partnered with Pepperi using existing features, using existing experience, you know, create what I think is a best-in-class sales offering.

About Chex Finer Foods

Chex Finer Foods, Inc. is a third generation, family owned specialty and natural foods distributor built on a commitment to quality and service.

In 1965, Jay Isenberg had the vision and fortitude to start a specialty food company out of a small garage in Sharon, Massachusetts. They worked tirelessly to build an enduring family business committed to honesty, hard work, and an unending dedication to both valued customers and loyal employees.

Over 54 years later, the business has grown immensely and continues to thrive. With the third generation of Isenbergs (Jeremy and Michael) now leading, Chex Finer Foods is the leading specialty and natural foods distributor on the East Coast. We take a partnership approach to our business, both with our vendors and customers. We are passionate about what we do and are dedicated to helping our customers grow and succeed through exceptional customer service, high-quality products, and customized sales programs.