Case Study
How Pinto Brothers Produce Cut Inventory Waste 40% Without Adding a Single Person
An experienced team, a few costly decisions each week, and a system that now catches them every morning.
Company
Pinto Brothers Produce
Industry
Regional produce distributor
Location
Greater Philadelphia
Engagement
Money Map, then system build and ongoing partnership
40%
less inventory waste
5%
of commodities drove more than half of dump volume, found in the first 30 days
Daily
view of what's at risk, in time to move it
0
headcount added
The Stakes
Every produce house carries waste. It's the cost of selling something that's alive. The question is never whether there's shrink, but where it hides and how early you can see it coming.
Pinto Brothers runs on an experienced team: buyers who know their growers, reps who know their accounts, and an operation that moves fast. The instincts were good. What they didn't have was a way to see, every morning, the few lots and buys that were about to turn against them.
What We Found
The data confirmed what a good operator would hope: the vast majority of buying calls were sound. The loss was concentrated in a small, predictable set of decisions, which made it fixable.
- 01A short list of commodities. About 30 commodities, roughly 5% of the portfolio, accounted for 54% of dump volume.
- 02A few costly decisions per week. Loss clustered in about 4% of commodity-weeks, roughly 7 decisions a week out of hundreds.
- 03One common root cause. In most of the costliest weeks, volume was bought beyond what customers had a track record of taking.
- 04Selling started late. Product was offered once it was unpacked and racked, giving up the freshest selling days.
- 05No bridge between lots and buyers. Reps had aging product and customers who'd buy it, but no way to match them without hours on the phone.
None of this is a people problem. It's an information problem, and information problems can be built away.
The System We Built
We built a layer on top of Produce Logic that takes the busy work off the team's desk and points those hours at the lots and accounts that make money. Nothing was migrated, and customers kept ordering the way they always had.
Take the orders
Order agent
Orders arriving by email, PDF or text are matched to the account, keyed line by line against what Pinto carries, and land in Produce Logic for a rep to approve.
Price confirmations and BOLs in one click
The paperwork that follows every order goes out without lots of clicks and retyping.
Stop the waste
Aging inventory view
Reps start the day with lots ranked by margin at risk, each with a name on it.
Campaigns from the rep's own inbox
Each aging lot is matched to the customers who've bought it before, and one click sends the offer as a note from someone they know, not a blast. Targeted texts reach the same buyers automatically.
Hold the line
Purchasing guardrails
Before committing to volume, buyers see how much of that commodity customers have actually taken, by season.
Price sheets from live inventory
Customer tiers get pricing by text on a set schedule before the day starts, trimmed to what they buy.
Daily leadership dashboard
Profit at risk, waste trend and inventory health, every morning instead of at month-end.
You can't be in produce without dealing with waste. What we didn't have was a way to see the few calls each week that were costing us. Now we're not guessing about what to sell first or what to buy next. The system tells us where the risk is, and we act on it.
Alex Penza
Pinto Brothers Produce
The Results
Inventory waste is down 40%, and the team now acts on risk the morning it appears rather than after the fact.
- Inventory waste
- Down 40%
- Paperwork
- Price confirmations and BOLs out in one click
- Rep time
- 6 hours a week of order entry, outreach and price sends automated
- Headcount
- None added
What's Next
The partnership keeps building, and each new piece points more of the team's day at selling and buying.
- Keep the customers. Every account's buying rhythm is watched, and the day an account goes quiet a task lands on the right rep's desk, while there's still a relationship to save.
- Take more orders off the desk. The order agent learns each customer's shorthand, so there's less to check each week.
- Smarter campaigns. Tighter customer segments, better send timing, and demand signals built further into purchasing on the front end.
That's the point of the system. It isn't a one-time report; it keeps finding and capturing margin week after week.
What's hiding in your operation?
Book a call and we'll show you where.
“The system tells us where the risk is, and we act on it.”
Alex Penza, Pinto Brothers ProduceNot ready to talk? Get the free daily terminal prices, or put a number on it first with the Money Map.