How a Bristol-based heritage foods producer replaced phone-based ordering with a custom B2B portal, increasing repeat orders by 35% and cutting order placement time from a five-minute phone call to a two-minute self-service process.
Prescott Heritage Foods, a Bristol-based firm, increased repeat orders by 35 percent after ajairu.dev built a custom B2B ordering portal. Trade customers can now place orders in two minutes instead of calling the sales team, with the portal paying for itself in new business alone.
Company: Prescott Heritage Foods
Location: Bristol, UK
Industry: Food Production and Wholesale
Engagement: Bespoke B2B Ordering Portal
Related Service: Custom Web Portal Development
Prescott Heritage Foods, a Bristol-based producer of artisanal and heritage food products, supplied over 120 trade customers across the South West. These included independent delis, farm shops, restaurants, and small retail chains. Every order came in by phone. A trade customer would call the sales team, work through a product list, check stock availability, confirm pricing, and wait for an order confirmation to be emailed manually.
The process worked when the company had 30 customers. At 120, it was breaking down. Sales staff spent most of their day taking orders rather than building relationships. Customers calling during busy periods were put on hold or sent to voicemail. Orders placed after hours were not confirmed until the next morning. The average order took five minutes on the phone, and mistakes were common when staff misheard product codes or quantities over a noisy line.
Managing Director Tom Prescott knew the phone-based system was limiting growth. Trade customers were ordering less frequently because the process was inconvenient. Some had started buying from competitors who offered online ordering. Tom needed a way to let trade customers place orders on their own schedule, without involving the sales team for every transaction.
We built a bespoke B2B ordering portal tailored specifically to Prescott Heritage Foods and their trade customer base. Each customer was given a secure login with their own pricing tiers, product catalogue, order history, and delivery preferences. The portal showed live stock availability, so customers could see what was in stock before placing an order rather than finding out later that something was on backorder.
The ordering workflow was designed around how trade customers actually buy. Customers could browse the catalogue by category, search by product code, or reorder from their previous orders with a single click. The system remembered each customer's delivery schedule and suggested orders based on their usual buying patterns. Custom pricing was applied automatically based on the customer's tier, so there was no need for the sales team to confirm or adjust prices manually.
The portal also handled the operational side. When an order was placed, it automatically generated a packing list for the warehouse, created an invoice in their accounting system through a custom API integration, and sent an order confirmation to the customer. The sales team was freed from order-taking and could focus on account management and new business.
The project took 10 weeks from initial discovery to launch. We migrated the existing customer database, product catalogue, and pricing tiers into the new platform. Each trade customer was onboarded with a brief training session, and we provided 30 days of post-launch support to handle any issues as people adapted to the new system.
Increase in repeat orders
Average order placement time
Trade customers self-serving
The most immediate impact was on repeat orders. When customers could place an order in two minutes at any time of day or night, they ordered more frequently. The friction of picking up the phone, waiting for an answer, and working through a product list had been suppressing order frequency for years without anyone realising it. Once that friction was removed, repeat orders jumped 35% within the first quarter.
Order accuracy improved dramatically. Misheard product codes and incorrect quantities, which had been a daily occurrence with phone orders, disappeared entirely because customers selected products from a visual catalogue and saw their order summary before submitting. Returns and adjustments dropped accordingly.
The sales team was redeployed from order-taking to account management. Instead of answering the phone all day, they spent their time visiting key accounts, introducing new product lines, and winning new business. The portal handled the routine orders. The sales team handled the relationships.
The custom B2B ordering portal transformed how our trade customers interact with us. Repeat orders are up 35% because placing an order now takes two minutes instead of calling through to our sales team. The portal pays for itself in new business alone.
Prescott Heritage Foods could have used an off-the-shelf e-commerce platform with a B2B extension. Several of their competitors had done exactly that. But the off-the-shelf options were built for generic retail, not for a heritage foods producer with 120 trade accounts, custom pricing tiers, delivery schedules, and a product catalogue that changed seasonally.
A bespoke portal meant the ordering workflow matched how Prescott's customers actually bought. The reorder-from-history feature, the suggested orders based on buying patterns, the live stock availability, and the automatic invoice generation were all specific to their business. An off-the-shelf platform would have required them to adapt their processes to the software. The bespoke portal adapted the software to their processes.
Because Prescott owns the source code, they can extend the portal as their business grows. When they launch a new product line or add a new customer tier, the change is a configuration update, not a request to a SaaS vendor. And there are no per-seat licensing costs or transaction fees, which matters when their customer base grows from 120 to 500 trade accounts.
The portal paid for itself in new business alone. The 35% increase in repeat orders, driven simply by making ordering easier, generated enough additional revenue in the first quarter to cover the entire build cost. Everything after that was profit.
If your trade customers are ordering by phone and your sales team is spending their day taking orders instead of building relationships, a bespoke B2B portal could be the answer. Book a free 30-minute discovery call to find out.