Local sourcing by supermarkets quickly arranged with Quista

212

partner supermarkets

355

suppliers

126%

growth order value in one year

212

partner supermarkets

355

suppliers

126%

growth order value in one year

Multi-sided marketplace

That delicious cheese or those truly fresh strawberries from the local farmer, supermarket entrepreneurs are more than eager to include them in their assortment. But preferably without the hassle of separate phone calls, emails, or WhatsApp messages to the supplier. The Quista webapp takes care of that. Freshheads guides this start-up from a to scalable, and beyond. Through trial and error to success.

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Challenge

The hassle of local purchasing

Sticking your head above the crowd: that's what entrepreneurs do to attract customers. For supermarkets, the same applies. Of course, the majority of products are the same everywhere. The only way to stand out is by offering unique, local products. Buying them is just such a hassle. Eline van Muilwijk, founder of Quista: “The real local products fall outside the established, automatic ordering processes. Then it often comes down to phone calls to the butcher in the village, emails to the baker on the corner, handwritten packing slips, that sort of thing. The supermarket world is highly digitalized. Except, that is, for this piece of own purchasing. I thought: we can do better!”

“

Freshheads is an indispensable teammate when starting a new business like this. They are critical and constantly keep the end user in mind. They don't just build, but test and check - over and over again. Everything for a result that truly adds value.

Eline van Muilwijk - Founder of Quista

Solution

Simple, effective webapp

Enter Quista. Supermarket employees order via the webapp from local suppliers. The platform is clear, straightforward, and easy to use. Eline: “Say, the supermarket employee notices an almost empty shelf in the morning. In the app, he checks if a colleague has already placed an order to replenish the stock. If not? Then that can be fixed immediately. choosing only from the local suppliers and specific products relevant to the supermarket. A huge relief for supermarkets, which are already struggling with high workloads and sky-high customer expectations. The process is also as clean as possible for local suppliers. In the app, they only fill in what the supermarket needs: the product name, price, and a barcode. This way, a farmer can easily manage his orders on his mobile, even from his tractor. And if he does business with multiple supermarkets, he simply ticks an extra box. Super handy.”

Process

Around the table with the end-user

Something like Quista didn't exist yet. Where do you start? At the beginning, of course! From scratch, we brainstormed with initiator Eline about shaping the non-existent business: how can we solve this problem and which features are truly necessary? We tested all assumptions. The moment we noticed: ‘Yes, a bite!’ we started a small trail, which we quickly expanded into a full-fledged app. Fast switching indeed, to keep the supermarket shelves filled. Head Rens Alkemade: “In two weeks, we built a simple version of the app, in which at least all the important features worked. With that, we tested our assumptions with the supermarket employees, what did and didn't work and what they were still missing. Later, we onboarded other supermarkets and gathered more input. All in all, this results in an app that users can no longer do without.”

Result

Local purchasing quickly arranged

Quista has now become quite indispensable for the participating supermarkets. Every month, they purchase more than 80,000 euros worth of products from local entrepreneurs via the app. The majority of supermarkets use Quista daily. Everything is in the app. Including, for example, waste registration and a quality module. Eline: “The goal is to scale up to one hundred participating supermarkets in the coming year. The users we have now are enormously enthusiastic. They see that thanks to Quista, ordering discipline is better, the shelf is better stocked, and that this also results in higher turnover. Super nice for local suppliers too, who see sales of their product increase thanks to Quista. It is now up to us to spark the fire in others.”