From farmers' markets to seamless ecommerce fulfilment with Trotter’s Independent Condiments

What started as a small family kitchen operation in Fife, Scotland, has grown into a thriving brand. Trotter’s Independent Condiments, founded by Byam Trotter in 2009, built its reputation selling at farmers' markets, farm shops and delicatessens.

As demand for their selection of condiments grew, so did customer inquiries: “Do you sell online?” 

It became clear that ecommerce was the next step. But fulfilling direct-to-consumer orders at scale was a new challenge – one that couldn’t be managed with handwritten notes and manual order processing.

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Challenge

"Some days we have 100 orders to go out in a day. That would’ve probably taken the best part of an hour to process manually, whereas with Zenstores it probably takes me two minutes."

Trotter’s has always focused on quality – whether in their ingredients, their recipes, or their customer relationships. However, manually handling orders was becoming a sticky situation.

As they expanded into ecommerce, fulfilment became a bottleneck – especially after moving into a larger kitchen and taking on contract manufacturing for other brands. Now, they weren’t just shipping their own products but handling orders for other companies as well.

With order volumes continuing to increase, their existing processes became time-consuming and inefficient, leading to several key challenges:

• Time-consuming manual processing: Orders were written out and processed manually, taking hours each day and increasing the risk of errors.
• Lack of integration: Signing in and out of multiple sales platforms and handling different shipping services from different carriers separately made order fulfilment inefficient.
• Scaling difficulties: As demand grew, keeping up with fulfilment without adding significant manual workload became a challenge.

These inefficiencies not only slowed down shipping processes but also made it harder for Trotter’s to scale their operations effectively – and it seemed their fulfilment process needed a serious shake-up.

‍Solution

“Zenstores sped up the process of printing all of the shipping labels and, for the person packing orders, they could just log in to a computer in the warehouse to see the jobsheets.” 

Transitioning from manual fulfilment to a scalable ecommerce shipping solution was no small task. However, Zenstores provided a seamless solution, streamlining Trotter’s fulfilment process and dramatically reducing the time spent on order management:

• Automated label creation: Shipping labels were generated in seconds, eliminating the need for manual data entry.
• Centralised order management: Orders from multiple platforms appeared in one place, streamlining the workflow.
• Carrier integration: Multiple carriers and shipping services could be managed, improving flexibility.

Zenstores helped them stir up success without the mess of manual processing. Trotter’s could fulfil orders faster and more efficiently, allowing them to focus on growth without the burden of manual processes.

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Results

"Since using Zenstores, our fulfilment processes have improved immeasurably. It’s made everything a lot slicker, a lot easier."

From small batch beginnings to streamlined fulfilment – Zenstores helped them spread the workload efficiently.

By switching to Zenstores, Trotter’s drastically reduced the time spent on order fulfilment. What once took over an hour to process manually now takes just minutes. The ability to manage multiple carriers and sales platforms from an all-in-one platform has not only simplified operations but also allowed them to scale confidently without adding unnecessary workload.

Beyond saving time, Zenstores has given Trotter’s more visibility over their fulfilment process. And, with a system that works effortlessly in the background, Trotter’s can relish the time saved and focus on growing their brand.