​​When Bearing Fruit Ventures acquired Spoons, a vibrant and loved acai bowl concept, they knew they were stepping into an opportunity. But with no inventory management system in place, the company was essentially "flying blind".

"Imagine driving a car or flying a plane where your windshield is tinted to the max. You can't see five feet in front of you," explains Cole Yates, Director of Human Resources at Bearing Fruit Ventures. "That's what it’s like trying to run a restaurant without an inventory management system."

That operational haze was costing the business.

The State Before MarketMan

Before implementing MarketMan, Spoons was operating without any form of inventory tracking. There were no systems in place to monitor usage, food waste, or price fluctuations. Orders were placed manually and siloed by supplier. In short, the team had no visibility into where their money was going or how to optimize it.

"Prior to MarketMan, inventory counts were done by hand, pen and paper. If you're not tracking your inventory or streamlining your ordering, you're essentially just throwing money out the door into the trash can,” Cole says. 

Without knowing how much product is going out the door, whether due to over-portioning, spoilage, theft, or price changes, it becomes impossible to manage cost of goods sold or drive profitability.

"We knew Spoons had amazing local loyalty and one of the best, if not the best, acai products. I take great pride in the product that we have, so we knew that we just had to systemize, and we'd be golden,” Cole recalls.

Searching for the Right Fit

When Bearing Fruit Ventures took over Spoons, they evaluated multiple inventory management systems, where MarketMan emerged as the clear front-runner.

"MarketMan stood out for its price-to-performance value," Cole says. "It was user-friendly, didn’t include extra modules we didn’t need at our size, and was perfect for building something from scratch."

MarketMan also offered seamless integrations with their suppliers which made it much easier to build their back-of-house operations from the ground up.

Implementation Goals

From the beginning, Cole and his team were clear about what they needed:

• A system to track actual vs. theoretical inventory usage
• Seamless ordering from suppliers
• Recipe and menu item build-outs
• Invoice and procurement visibility
• Historical pricing analysis for supplier goods
• EDI integration for more automated invoice processing

MarketMan checked all the boxes.

Bringing Order with MarketMan

With MarketMan in place, the Spoons team could finally begin to see what was really going on inside their business.

"We were able to identify that acai fruit and certain spreads were huge sources of product gap," Cole explains. "The gap being the difference between what we should have used versus what we actually used."

This discovery allowed them to launch corrective training, inform team leads, and hold stores accountable to these insights.

"We were able to train the team, inform the leads, and let them know that we were tracking these things and we were gonna hold them accountable," says Cole.

The result? A more controlled operation and significantly improved financial performance.

"We've turned the company around. We’re now making pretty heavy profits. MarketMan was key in making that happen."

Operational Confidence and Control

The most valuable function for the Spoons team has been MarketMan's Actual vs. Theoretical reporting. By integrating their POS system and performing weekly and monthly counts in the app, they can now see precisely where inventory usage is deviating from expectations.

"Without MarketMan, we would’ve been guessing and flying blind," Cole says. "Now we can sit down in a meeting and say, 'Here’s where our biggest gap was. Here’s what we need to fix.'"

Cole also appreciates the ability to track historical pricing from suppliers. This is especially important for a concept that relies heavily on produce, where costs can fluctuate frequently.

"Strawberries could be up in price this week, and without MarketMan, you might not even notice. But now we can run a report and know instantly if we’re getting a good deal or not."

Streamlining Orders and Saving Time

With MarketMan’s EDI integration, Spoons can now automatically link their supplier invoices and orders into one streamlined system. This has drastically reduced the manual workload that used to eat up hours each week.

"Before MarketMan, every order had to be made manually through each supplier’s portal," Cole says. "Now, we do it all through MarketMan. It’s efficient, trackable, and connected."

Cole also notes significant time savings in the inventory count process.

"With MarketMan, I plug it into my phone, tablet, or laptop and just go through the system. Certainly saving much more time than pen and paper."

Customer Success That Goes Above and Beyond

Cole reserves special praise for MarketMan’s support team, particularly their account rep, Erica.

"She’s been phenomenal—above and beyond. I’ve probably been annoying at times, but she’s always responsive and helpful," he says with a laugh. "There’s never been a time I questioned their integrity or their ability to help us succeed."

Customer support was actually a deciding factor in choosing MarketMan during the evaluation phase.

"They were soft, inviting, and yet they knew their stuff," Cole says. "That was honestly one of the reasons we went with MarketMan."

Transformational Results

Since implementing MarketMan, Spoons has experienced significant improvements in operational clarity and financial performance:

• Inventory visibility: Gaps in usage are now trackable and actionable
• Recipe accuracy: Ingredient-level precision in every bowl
• Vendor accountability: Real-time pricing and invoice transparency
• Time savings: Faster, digital inventory counts compared to the old pen-and-paper method
• Operational confidence: Team leads and managers have tools to make smarter decisions
• Profitability: Spoons has turned from underperforming to profitable, in large part thanks to data and systems provided by MarketMan

"Certainly there were a lot of things that went into turning Spoons around and making it profitable," says Cole. "But we wouldn’t have been able to do it without MarketMan.”

Room to Grow

While Spoons currently operates a small number of units, Cole believes MarketMan is well-positioned to grow alongside them.

"MarketMan has the capacity to scale with us," he notes. "We’re just getting started in terms of what the platform can do. We’d love to use MarketMan more—we just need to build out those systems."

Would He Recommend It?

"Yes," Cole says without hesitation. "It starts with customer service. That’s how you win in the restaurant industry. And MarketMan gets that."

“I'd recommend Market Man just because there are so many different tools, and they're certainly ahead of the mark compared to other companies.”

For any restaurant or small chain looking for a best-in-class inventory management solution, whether they’re starting from scratch or replacing a legacy system, Cole’s advice is clear:

“If you're looking for an inventory management system that has great performance capacity, I'd recommend having MarketMan.”

See MarketMan in Action

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Register for a demo to learn how you can automate inventory tracking, cut food waste, streamline ordering, and turn insights into profit.

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