When your finance manager is spending half her day just figuring out what coffee to roast, you've got a problem. Here's how one Nashville roastery broke free from operational chaos and achieved 30% better efficiency across their entire team.

The Problem: Organized Chaos

It's 7 AM at Bongo Roasting Co. in Nashville. Rachel Ernst, their Finance & Operations Manager, walks into what can only be described as organized chaos.

Email orders scattered across different inboxes. Handwritten phone orders she has to decipher like ancient hieroglyphics. Text messages from customers asking for "the usual" (but whose usual?).

"I would say probably about half the day was just doing orders," Rachel admits. From 7 AM to 11 AM, she'd sort through emails, respond to every single one, and try to compile orders for production.

Meanwhile, the production team had their own version of operational purgatory: "The Mega Sheet" - an Excel spreadsheet that was supposed to calculate roasting and production needs. "You know, it worked at times," Rachel explains. "But if there was an adjustment to the production plan for the day or we needed to add an order on, it just didn't work."

George Dorrance, Bongo's Head Roaster, felt the pain daily. The manual process took the production team a minimum of an hour every morning - and that was when everything went smoothly.

Once the orders were fulfilled, Alicia Swarz, head of procurement and AR/AP, would spend over 4 hours each day manually invoicing each single order.

Bongo Roasting Co. has been around for three decades. But as they grew, the legacy processes had grown into operational quicksand that was consuming their team's time and constraining growth.

The Transformation: What Changed

Within just a few months of  implementing RoasterTools, Bongo achieved results that transformed not just their operations, but their entire business trajectory:

Time Savings Across the Board

Table 1
Function Before After Time Saved
Daily Order Processing 4+ hours/day 30 mins/day 87% reduction
Daily Invoicing and Payment Collection 5+ hours/day 1-2 hours/day 4-5 hours/day
Production Planning Manual, error-prone Instant calculations 10 hours/week
Made with HTML Tables

⭐️ Overall Result: ~ 30% increase in team-wide efficiency, according to General Manager Jonathan Sepulveda

Revenue Impact - Unexpected Growth

Sepulveda shared that previously the company was on a growth trajectory for 2025 of about 7%, but after implementation, they are now 18% over last year to date.

He notes there was a 6.7% increase in the two months since using RoasterTools that exceeded their current trajectory without a price increase or other significant changes. 

  • Accelerated Growth - projected 7%, after RoasterTools 18% YOY growth 
  • Increase in wholesale orders from customers discovering products through the new online portal‍
  • Improved cash flow through automated payment processing

Quality of Life Improvements

  • Organic certification inspection: "Record time" - fastest they've ever completed it
  • Team stress levels: Dramatically reduced
  • Strategic capacity: Leadership freed to focus on growth instead of firefighting

Jonathan Sepulveda, CEO, sums it up: "For me, I can move into more of the CEO role and think more strategically instead of putting out so many operational fires."

How They Got There: The Journey to the Right Solution

Step 1: The Failed Experiment with Generic Software

In their search for a solution, Bongo Roasting Co. reviewed many options and ultimately decided to give the wholesale ordering platform Bluecart a try.

It didn’t go so well.

The onboarding dragged on for months without completion. The promised customization features didn't work like they needed. But the fundamental problem went deeper.

👉 It didn't address the roasting and production side of the business.

Bluecart could take orders. But it couldn't help them track green coffee inventory, plan production, or handle organic compliance. They'd still have all the same operational chaos - just in a different interface. "With something as specialized as coffee, it just really seemed to create the same amount of headache." Ernst noted

After two and a half months, they pulled the plug.

Step 2: Discovering Industry-Specific Solutions

That's when Alicia discoveredRoasterTools - a solution built by people who actually understood coffee operations.

"[The founders] had owned a roastery at one point, and so [they] already knew those bottlenecks," Alicia notes. "No one really knows that unless you're in the industry."

The difference was immediately clear. RoasterTools wasn't just an ordering system - it was built to handle the complete coffee operation workflow:

This checked all the boxes for what they needed. 

Step 3: Implementation and Results

The operational improvements came quickly:

For Rachel (Finance & Operations Manager): Daily order processing dropped from 4+ hours to just 30 minutes for order review. The freed up time allowed her to return to her actual expertise - building backend data systems and projections. Work that actually grows the business instead of just keeping it running.

For Alicia (Procurement and A/R / A/P):  She recouped 4-5 hours per day thanks to automated invoicing. "Customers being able to place the order themselves and then it's invoiced - that just saved me two phone calls, three emails, and like 20 minutes for one customer." She now spends this time on strategic procurement instead of administrative follow-up.

For George's Production Team: The instant production planning calculations saved at least 10 hours per week. No more wrestling with The Mega Sheet.

The Wholesale Portal Impact: The portal's visibility effect was significant - when customers can see products in an organized online catalog instead of trying to remember what to ask for, they buy more. This contributed to a 7% increase in wholesale orders. The sales team started using the portal as a tool in their work to help drive sales.

The Organic Certification Win: The most recent USDA Organic inspection highlighted the transformation. George describes last year's inspection as stressful and disorganized. This year, sales and inventory data pulled directly from RoasterTools provided everything the inspector needed. "They were in and out a record amount of time... The shortest time I've ever seen."

The Cultural Shift

The numbers only tell part of the story. The real transformation was cultural.

"Why are we investing in these processes and procedures that streamline and automate?" Jonathan explains his philosophy. "It's because I need my employees' minds to be operating in a place of thriving, not surviving."

"Our team is just far more integrated into the process and far more aware of costs and inventories now because we've all had to go through this process," he adds.

Lessons for Growing Coffee Companies

1. Generic wholesale platforms will disappoint you

Coffee operations are too specialized for one-size-fits-all solutions. Bongo Roasting Co.'s experience with Bluecart proves this: you need software that understands the complete coffee workflow, not just order entry.

What to look for:

  • Does it handle green coffee inventory tracking?
  • Can it calculate roasting demand automatically?
  • Does it create production schedules?
  • Will it support organic certification requirements?
  • Was it built by people who understand coffee operations?

2. Quantify your current pain before you shop

Track your team's actual time spent on tasks that don't produce value and can be automated.

Action item: Time your current order processing for one full week. Include:

  • Email sorting and response time
  • Phone call follow-ups for incomplete orders
  • Manual invoice creation
  • Production planning and Mega Sheet wrestling
  • Inventory tracking and reconciliation

You might be surprised by what you discover - and what that time is really costing your business.

3. Industry expertise matters more than feature lists

Software built by people who understand coffee operations will always outperform generic tools, even if those tools look more sophisticated on paper.

As Alicia notes about RoasterTools' founders: "No one really knows those bottlenecks unless you're in the industry."

4. Time savings should unlock strategic work, not just reduce costs

The real ROI isn't just efficiency - it's what your team can do with the reclaimed time.

At Bongo Roasting Co.:

  • Rachel builds data systems for better forecasting
  • Alicia focuses on strategic procurement
  • Jonathan can actually think like a CEO instead of a firefighter
  • The production team can focus on coffee quality 

"RoasterTools is giving us our time back, giving us some of our mind back, giving us the opportunity to thrive, as opposed to feeling like we're just in survival mode." Jonathan notes.

5. Your customers benefit too

Better operations don't just help you - they improve the customer experience:

  • Faster order confirmation
  • More accurate fulfillment
  • Easier reordering through online portals
  • Product discovery (leading to that 7% increase in wholesale orders)
  • Better availability through improved inventory management
  • Easier payment options

The Bottom Line

Bongo Roasting Co.'s story isn't about technology - it's about escaping operational chaos that was constraining growth and burning out their team.

"This is an absolute no-brainer for any roaster that doesn't have a system like this put in place," Jonathan concludes. "If you're serious about scaling, growing, being efficient, being better for your employees, better for your customers, this is the tool you need."

The Transformation at a Glance:

  • ✅ 30% team efficiency improvement
  • ✅ 18% revenue growth (vs. 7% previous trajectory)
  • ✅ Daily order processing: 4+ hours → 30 minutes (87% reduction)
  • ✅ 4-5 hours daily saved on invoicing
  • ✅ 10 hours weekly saved in production planning
  • ✅ 7% increase in wholesale orders
  • ✅ Organic inspection: "record time"
  • ✅ Team stress levels: dramatically reduced
  • ✅ Leadership freed for strategic growth

Most importantly: The team is thriving, using their unique skills to improve and grow the company instead of drowning in manual processes.

Ready to see similar results in your coffee operation?

Schedule a demoto see how RoasterTools can transform your operations.

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