Bell Foods
Harahan, Louisiana

Customer Profile
Founded by John Bellini II in 1985, Bell Foods started as a small Whole Muscle and Portion Control Meat Company serving a community of local customers. After graduating college in 1998, John Bellini’s son, John Bellini III, joined the company and has since taken over the growing business. Today Bell Foods is a premier Louisiana owned and operated Food Service Distributor servicing approximately 300 customers within a 300 mile radius of the company’s headquarters with a full line of meat, poultry, deli, and seafood items. Their customers are hotels, restaurants, institutions, and casinos. They first became a FoodConnex customer in 1999.

Business Challenge
Upon joining the company in 1998, John Bellini III knew that if the company was going to continue to be successful and grow that they would need to automate many of the every day tasks that were still being performed manually. John points out, “There was absolutely no revolving inventory system and everything was being tracked by hand. We needed to move away from the old manual way of doing things and put a more automated system into place.”

Our Solution
John looked at several software products many of which were either outside of his price range, too complex, or required custom programming before choosing FoodConnex. “Once we saw the FoodConnex software we could see the obvious benefits in it versus the competition.”

One of the major benefits has been the positive impact FoodConnex has had in their billing department. John explains, “Before FoodConnex one staff member had the receivables information in their drawer, while another had shipping receipts in another desk drawer. It was one huge mess. With FoodConnex we were able to reduce the number of office staff and see immediate savings in labor costs. Now with all the information at our fingertips I can load a truck, write a check, and collect receivables all at the same time. Not only is the financial aspect an improvement but it has really made a huge difference in reducing the number of errors.”

With FoodConnex’s report generating capabilities Bell Foods now has immediate access to important business information that they didn’t have before. “We can hit a few keys and generate information like our Return Rate or Inventory Shrinkage Percentage and take it to our people right away to solve problems before they become huge issues. We’re no longer in the dark about our own company’s inventory, profit, and accounts receivable information.”

Positive Business Results
As Bell Foods grew and then merged with a seafood company, FoodConnex grew with them and they were able to easily upgrade their software to provide even more capabilities and create the successful Bell Foods of today. Currently Bell Foods is over seven times larger than it was when they started using FoodConnex more than eight years ago. “Our growth rate in such a relatively short period can not be understated,” John says. “Having unlimited and immediate access to all the information that FoodConnex provides helped us grow at a much quicker speed than we ever thought possible. We saw a 65% growth in profits in only 11 month’s time. The amazing growth we have experienced from using FoodConnex has provided us with the means to upgrade our facilities and significantly expand our customer base. And FoodConnex has grown with us throughout the last eight years. It’s enabled us to do some really fancy stuff just like the big pricey software guys. And the support staff at Integrated Management Solutions does an amazing job of training and servicing all our needs so there’s no added expense for an IT department.”

“We can delegate much more effectively and give more responsibility to our employees. My partner and I no longer have the 60-70 hour work weeks we once had. And we can rely on the system to take care of the company even when we aren’t in the office. Without us physically being in the office - things still get done!”

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