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Margin per product and customer, every day

Food and beverage producers work on thin margins that move every week: raw material prices, retailer promotions, short shelf life. The numbers that show it sit in the ERP, the production system and a dozen spreadsheets.

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Where margin leaks

Four places worth watching every morning

Raw materialsCost known too late

Recipe cost is updated once a quarter, while milk, cocoa or packaging prices move every week. Margin per product is clear only after month-end.

PromotionsTrade spend nobody measures

Discounts, listing fees and promotions sit in different systems. Whether a promotion made money is a debate, not a number.

Shelf lifeForecast errors become write-offs

With short shelf life, every unit overproduced is a cost. Write-offs are counted, but rarely traced back to the forecast or the customer.

CustomersService level by retailer

Retail chains measure you on full and on-time deliveries. You often see their scorecard before your own numbers.

KPIs we usually start with

Defined once, used by everyone

  • Margin per product and customer
  • Raw material cost vs recipe
  • Promotion return
  • Trade spend, % of sales
  • Write-offs, % of production
  • Yield and OEE
  • On time in full by retailer
  • Forecast accuracy

What it can look like

An example scenario

Illustrative scenario based on patterns we typically see. Not a client story: your numbers will differ.

Food & beverageIllustrative scenario

A food producer supplying retail chains

Two factories, about 400 products, most sales through five retail chains.

Before
Margin per product is known after month-end. Promotion costs sit in finance, volumes in sales, and nobody can say which promotions paid off.
Health Check found
3 definitions of product margin, trade spend recorded in 2 systems, and write-offs not linked to forecasts.
After the fix
Margin per product and customer every morning, including promotions. Write-offs from short shelf life fell from 3.1% to 1.9% of production.
Timeline
3-week Health Check, then 10 weeks of fix and build.

Live demo · generated data

Food margin desk

Built for a chilled food producer supplying three retail chains and wholesale: margin from list price to net, which promotions pay off, write-offs by category and on-time-in-full with delivery fines, with an AI assistant.

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Where is your margin going?

Show us one margin report you don’t fully trust. 45 minutes, free, with a short note of our first observations.

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