Scaling Up with EDI: Renfro Foods Case Study

Renfro Foods: The “Biggest Little Guys” in the Salsa Business Do EDI Like the Big Guys

Over twenty years ago, Renfro Foods began to get requirements from their large retail customers to do Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).

Back then, there were very few EDI solutions for small businesses.

Doug Renfro, President of Renfro Foods and member of the Specialty Foods Hall of Fame, recalls, “The EDI solutions we found were for large companies with IT departments. We were tiny, and IT was one of my many other duties.” 

Renfro Foods needed an inexpensive, easy-to-use, and dependable solution from a provider who could walk them through technical issues. This challenge still exists today for specialty food vendors who want to sell to most retail, distributor, and e-commerce marketplace customers.

The Edict Systems EDI Solution

Renfro Foods selected Edict Systems’ WebEDI service to start doing EDI with their most demanding customers quickly. WebEDI’s easy-to-use browser interface enabled them to meet their customers’ EDI requirements without needing to know EDI.

At the time of this case study, Renfro Foods is the 9th largest U.S. salsa maker, producing more than 60,000 jars of product per day. They sell through leading supermarkets in all 50 states via EDI. 

Because of this growth in customers and order volume, they now use Edict Systems’ Cloud-based B2B Trading Network, EnterpriseEC, with data mapping integrated with their accounting system, AccountMate. This is referred to as integrated EDI, and provides hands-free order entry and EDI invoicing from AccountMate, which streamlines their Order-to-Cash processes.

This saves time and money by automatically mapping and loading EDI purchase orders into AccountMate and translating invoice data into EDI for transmission to customers.

“We’ve added many customer partners over the years and Edict Systems has always helped us through various hoops. We still appreciate their stability and constant improvement.”
- Doug Renfro, President, Renfro Foods, Inc.

Start Using EDI the Easy Way with Edict Systems 

If you’re a small business just starting out with EDI and need to ramp up fast, WebEDI could be right for you. WebEDI is a cloud-based EDI subscription service that makes connecting and doing EDI with your valued customers fast and painless. You can even start doing EDI within hours with any of our many supported grocers and retailers.

And like Renfro Foods, we can support you with our EnterpriseEC or Integrated EDI solutions for direct integration with existing accounting and business systems. At Edict Systems, we do EDI so you don’t have to. 

Learn more about our solutions here.