The landscape
Every option a food or beverage distributor in Australia or New Zealand is realistically choosing between, including the three we most often lose to.
We sell one of the products on this page, so read it as what it is. What we can do is be accurate about the others and specific about where we are the wrong answer. Every claim about another product was read off that company's own public material, on the date shown against it. If we have got something wrong about yours, tell us and we will fix it rather than defend it.
How to choose
Most of this list eliminates itself once you have answered the first two honestly.
01
This is the first question and it eliminates most of the list. A network like Ordermentum sells you access to venues already on it, and that is a real answer to a real problem. A platform like Carrots, Fresho or EasyVend sells you the system you run your own trading on and will not introduce you to anybody. If new accounts are what you actually need, buy the network and do not let a feature comparison talk you out of it.
02
In an app they already use for their other suppliers, or on a channel that is yours. The first is easier for the buyer on day one, because it is one login for everything they order. The second means the relationship, the data and the brand stay with you. Neither is obviously right. It depends on whether you are trying to be found or trying to hold accounts you already have.
03
Be specific, because different products solve different bottlenecks. If it is staff re-keying orders that arrive as emails, texts and voicemails overnight, look hardest at Fresho. If it is picking, packing and stock, look at Fresho or EasyVend. If it is that your prices are complicated and the invoice keeps disagreeing with the order, that is what Carrots was built around. If it is that nobody knows you exist, none of these fix it except the network.
04
In Australian foodservice below enterprise the answer is usually Xero or MYOB, and that narrows the list fast. Ordermentum and EasyVend both integrate with them. Carrots does not: it connects to SAP Business One today, and Xero and MYOB are not built. If you are on Xero and want that link working on day one, we are not your answer yet, and we would rather say so here than in a demo.
05
If every customer pays list, almost anything on this page will do, including a Shopify B2B store. If you have per-customer price books, negotiated contract lines, quantity breaks and promotions that can all land on the same product on the same day, that chain is where these products differ most, and it is worth making every vendor demonstrate it on your own data rather than theirs.
06
Occasionally yes, and the honest version of that argument is that the catalogue and the pricing rules are the project, not the website. The build is rarely the expensive part. Keeping the catalogue, the price books and the trade rules correct for years afterwards is. We wrote up how to tell the difference before you commit.
The field
Including the three we most often lose to, and why you might reasonably pick them.
Network
The largest ordering network in Australian hospitality.
A two-sided platform: suppliers sell on it, venues buy on it. They say they process over $1.5B in orders annually and refer to 50,000 venues on the platform. The reason to choose them is the one thing no platform on this page can match, which is that they will bring you customers. They also publish their prices, integrate with Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks, NetSuite, Unleashed and Cin7, and have published native apps. If you are early, under-distributed, or on Xero, they are a strong answer.
Supplier platform
Order and operations management, built around fresh food.
Fruit and veg, seafood, meat and poultry, built on what they describe as over 20 years in fresh food wholesale, and operating well beyond Australia. Their OrderPilot turns emails, messages, voicemails and PDFs into sales orders, which is further than we have taken the same idea. They also cover picking, packing and inventory, which we do not do at all. If overnight order entry is your biggest cost, start here.
Supplier platform
Supplier-side order management with delivery routing and Xero sync.
The closest thing on this list to what Carrots does, and an Australian business. Their site describes a customer self-service ordering portal, orders arriving by portal, CSV, EDI, sales rep and driver entry, recurring orders, automated invoicing with direct debit and a pay-now button, inventory tracking, and route management through a driver tool called MiniVend. They sync with Xero and MYOB. If you need delivery routing or that accounting link, they cover ground we do not.
Buyer tool
A venue's procurement tool, with a marketplace attached.
Worth understanding rather than comparing, because its customer is the venue and not you. Menu costing, price tracking, invoice capture, POS and accounting integrations, and a marketplace giving venues access to hundreds of suppliers. For a distributor it is a channel to be listed in, not a platform to run on, and it sits perfectly happily alongside one.
Suite
A broad B2B commerce suite aimed at medium and enterprise.
Twelve modules spanning ordering, field sales, route accounting, trade promotions and retail execution, with native apps that work offline. Global rather than Australian. If you need route accounting or retail execution, or your reps take orders in venues with no signal, that is a real answer and we do not have one.
Supplier platform
The lowest published supplier-side price in this market.
AUD99 a month for a small operation, rising to AUD499 for unlimited users and warehouses, with a one-month trial for a dollar. An all-in-one platform for wholesalers and warehouses generally, with real-time inventory, online payments and delivery tracking. Their public site is light on how trade pricing, cut-offs and GST are handled, so the trial is the fastest way to answer those. If budget is the binding constraint, start here.
Suite
Global B2B wholesale commerce, built around how fashion sells.
A serious platform, and almost certainly not for you. Assortments, size curves, sell-through and markdowns are the vocabulary, and the brands they name are apparel and footwear. It appears on this page because food distributors do search for it, and the most useful thing we can tell them is that one of the two of you is in the wrong aisle. If you sell garments wholesale it is a leader; if you sell milk it is not aimed at you.
Adjacent
Cin7, Unleashed and similar, where ordering is a module rather than the product.
If you already run one of these for stock, it will usually offer some form of trade ordering portal, and that is the cheapest thing in the world to evaluate because you are already paying for it. Try it before you buy anything on this page. Where these tend to run out is depth on the buyer's side and on pricing chains, but you will find that out faster and cheaper by using the one you have than by reading about it.
Adjacent
A retail platform with wholesale features bolted on.
A perfectly reasonable answer for a distributor whose customers all pay list price and order like consumers. It gets harder as trade rules multiply: per-customer price books, credit terms, order minimums, delivery cut-offs and account approval are the things retail platforms were not shaped around. Carrots integrates with Shopify rather than competing with it, because plenty of distributors sensibly run a retail store and a trade channel side by side.
Adjacent
Sometimes right, and usually costed wrong.
The website is rarely the expensive part. The catalogue, the price books and the trade rules staying correct for years is. We wrote the arguments for and against without pretending the answer is always to buy something.
Against us
Not a humility exercise. These are the 5 reasons a distributor should buy something else, and they are the most useful thing on this page.
Still here
A comparison page that concludes the vendor who wrote it wins on everything is an advertisement, and reads like one. If one of the others above fits you better, go and buy it. If you want to know whether we fit, the fastest way to find out is the feature checklist, which answers the standard evaluation questions including the ones where the answer is no.
