An Expert’s Guide to Selecting the Best B2B Food eCommerce Platform

As the food and beverage B2B ecommerce grows, enterprises will need a transformative B2B food ecommerce platform for the FMCG industry to improve sales and operational efficiency. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll discuss the main challenges F&B companies face while growing their ecommerce and explore the leading B2B food ecommerce platforms.

1. THE STATE OF F&B INDUSTRY
2. WHAT DOES B2B MEAN IN THE FOOD INDUSTRY?
3. CHALLENGES F&B COMPANIES FACE WHEN SCALING THEIR ECOMMERCE
4. HOW TO CHOOSE THE BEST PLATFORM FOR THE B2B FOOD BUSINESS
5. TOP 8 LEADING FOOD AND BEVERAGE ECOMMERCE SOLUTIONS
6. WHY ENTERPRISES CHOOSE VIRTO COMMERCE B2B FOOD ECOMMERCE PLATFORM

Food and beverage products are part of a larger industry of fast-moving consumer goods or FMCG. As evident from the name, these goods have a high turnover, a short shelf life of days or weeks, and a relatively low-profit margin per product. Notably, food and drinks account for over 70% of FMCG value.

While talking about the F&B industry, it’s hard not to acknowledge the effect the pandemic had on the market. At first, due to COVID-associated restrictions, global consumers migrated to online channels out of necessity. However, as they have become more drawn by the convenience of these channels, consumer preferences in grocery and prepackaged food delivery shopping shifted toward ecommerce more drastically. In the U.S. alone, ecommerce stood at 7.2% of all grocery spending in May 2023. That’s more than 35% above pre-pandemic levels.

Along with other F&B ecommerce trends, digital automation became a priority for B2B enterprises in the food and beverage industry. To understand the market better, let’s define the B2B model in the F&B industry.

Food industry market players can operate within B2C (Business-to-Consumer), B2B (Business-to-Business) business models, or even a combination of both. In a typical B2C setup, a company, not necessarily a manufacturer of food and drinks, sells its products to end users. Some F&B manufacturers implement a D2C business model and sell their products directly to end consumers, bypassing retailers.

The traditional B2B business model involves F&B companies selling products to intermediaries such as wholesalers, dealers, distributors, and retailers. Amid ecommerce growth, however, the boundaries between business models become vague. For instance, an individual customer can also be a business representative interested in your products. Thus, food and beverage enterprises try to elevate customer experience on individual and business levels.

Despite the opportunities that digital channels offer, expanding F&B B2B ecommerce also presents very unique challenges.

The F&B industry has a highly competitive environment where each penny (and each minute) counts. Moreover, external factors such as rampant inflation, geopolitical pressures, and rising food costs have a massive impact on grocery retail with a relatively low-profit margin per item.

Let’s look closer at the five challenges F&B enterprises face when scaling their online business operations:

Managing a supply chain for perishable goods such as food and drinks is a challenging task for a growing F&B business. Add to that the management of extensive catalogs of products with individual price lists for both B2C and B2B clients, and the problem becomes even more acute.

A food and beverage supply chain solution can streamline the process. A real-time inventory integrated with F&B ecommerce provides up-to-date information across all channels so your stock levels and prices meet customers’ contracts.

In modern post-pandemic commerce, the timing and convenience of deliveries matter as much as the quality of products. Ensuring cost-effective delivery of perishable goods, particularly for bulk orders, can be logistically challenging for F&B enterprises.

In this case, a robust B2B food and beverage commerce platform can ensure that all stakeholders within the supply chain, from transportation to storage to distribution, are integrated and connected to your F&B ecommerce.

When expanding their business internationally, F&B companies working closely with distributors or dealers often find it challenging to digitize routes to customers. Moreover, food and beverage companies operating within a B2B model may struggle to get all-around customer insights to build a superior CX, especially in fragmented retail.

A logical answer to this challenge is building a customer-friendly food B2B portal through which distributors can sell your products to small retailers or grocers. This type of food B2B portal also allows F&B enterprises to have a complete picture of the business process.

Global food and beverage enterprises must comply with a wide range of regulations that differ from country to country. These include food safety regulations and labeling requirements, customer data protection laws, and tax and payment security requirements.

B2B food and beverage software can assist product management teams by automating the tracking and documentation of compliance-related information.

While scaling an online business, many F&B enterprises realize the need for innovation to combat the risk of disruption by agile competitors. When choosing the most suitable B2B food commerce platform, companies look at how they can smoothly integrate and synchronize their existing ERP and CRM systems with ecommerce platforms.

Unfortunately, more often than not, companies find themselves in need of replatforming due to the technical limitations of their existing solution. This is indeed one of the biggest challenges a modern ecommerce business faces. However, replatforming to an advanced ecommerce solution will ensure that integrations to CRMs and ERPs will, in fact, work.

A future-proof food ecommerce B2B platform can help F&B companies combat these challenges and scale their online presence while improving customer experience and retention. So, what are the key factors to consider when making a crucial decision regarding a B2B food platform?

The first step in finding a solution that 100% fits your business is, obviously, realizing your business needs, the objective, and the requirements for a B2B food sales software. At this stage, it’s important to consider your F&B business’s order volume, catalog, pricing strategy, and essential functionalities, as certain ecommerce solutions have limitations to SKU volumes and more.

Here is a complete list of questions to ask yourself before jumping into B2B platform testing.

Secondly, F&B companies need to understand the potential risks of disruption by competitors. As we’ve mentioned earlier, as part of the FMCG industry, the food and beverage segment is a highly competitive market where continuous digital innovation plays a major role in winning over customer loyalty.

To better understand your risks of disruption, try answering the following questions.

The total cost of ownership (TCO) is an excellent measure of your B2B food commerce platform’s viability. In addition to license fees and the costs of launching and maintaining a B2B food solution, F&B enterprises must consider the cost of continuous innovation. The latter includes further platform scaling, additional features & capabilities, and resources invested to achieve your business goals.

A viable and cost-effective B2B food and beverage software, as a rule, has these five must-have features that provide the company with the following:

• Cloud-based ⭢ scalability & accessibility.
• Open code ⭢ high level of customization.
• Modularity ⭢ flexible extensions & upgradability.
• API-first ⭢ seamless integration & extensibility.
• Headless ⭢ decoupled frontends & flexible user interfaces.

A platform has true architectural excellence with these technical capabilities. They ensure the ability to customize a platform in the future while also offering the option to use pre-existing features to jump-start an ecommerce solution.

Now, let’s examine the leading B2B food and beverage commerce platform based on the factors described above.

As one of the oldest solutions on the market, the SAP platform is specifically designed for enterprises. This B2B platform takes an industry-specific approach to integrating accounting, finance, inventory, and F&B distribution software.

However, SAP has its limitations in supporting extensive catalogs of food or beverage products and individual price lists. Additionally, it doesn’t offer continuous innovation of its B2B food ecommerce platform and requires significant investments to maintain its performance. Check out our blog for a detailed comparison of SAP Commerce Cloud with other B2B solutions. Examples of SAP F&B clients: Nestle and Ferrara.

Salesforce is likewise an enterprise-focused platform for ecommerce. It functions more as a SaaS service than an independent ecommerce platform for food businesses; customers also make note of the product’s limited extensibility. For an F&B enterprise, this means you can add some additional features, but you won’t be able to adapt core capabilities along unique customers’ scenarios. Example of Salesforce’s F&B clients: PepsiCo and Kellogg's.

Chainlane is a supply chain management and loss prevention solution designed for retail chains. The company aims to improve retail inventory accuracy, reduce shoplifting, and enable targeted digital marketing. It can act as a food and beverage supply chain solution, but it has little to no innovation in other aspects of an F&B business.

Chainlane’s portfolio of clients mostly consists of retail clothing companies. Although, it still has some food companies on the list. Examples of Chainlane’s F&B clients: KFC.

WooCommerce is a B2B ecommerce platform for small and medium-sized enterprises. It doesn’t necessarily support the fastest time-to-market innovation to meet customers’ expectations. WooCommerce has limited capabilities that are crucial for F&B companies (e.g., catalog structure) but can be improved with external plugins. This will cost more and implies additional technical risks, which, in turn, can lead to poor performance.

That means that F&B companies will struggle to predict the TCO of such a food ecommerce B2B platform. Example of WooCommerce’s F&B clients: Dan-O's Seasoning.

Pepperi positions itself as an all-in-one B2B food commerce platform. It can combine field sales automation, retail merchandising, and B2B ecommerce in an integrated mobile solution. It acts as viable B2B food sales software for sales reps. However, it only has a limited number of pre-built modules and lacks flexibility and innovative features for enterprises seeking a scalable B2B food ecommerce platform. Examples of Pepperi’s F&B clients: Diaz Food, Chex Finer Foods, and Sushi Sushi.

Sana Commerce is another SME-focused ecommerce platform. The Sana platform can assist F&B companies that start their digital transformation, but it lacks key features for supporting multiple warehouses and customizing upselling or cross-selling. Additionally, all changes to catalogs and properties must be managed through an ERP system, potentially complicating the workflow for Sales Managers. Example of Sana Commerce’s F&B clients: Food and Dairy Co.

Adobe Commerce, better known as Magento, is an ecommerce platform designed for enterprises. The open-source nature of the platform allows the addition of new and unique features. Although Magento has its platform customization benefits, from an architectural point of view, the solution is still considered a monolith.

Thus, F&B companies won’t be able to fully enjoy the advantages of the platform’s API-first, cloud-native, and headless approach. You can learn more about Magento and its F&B-friendly alternatives in our blog. Example of Magento’s F&B clients: Coca-Cola and Nestle Nespresso.

Virto Commerce is a modular, open-source, and API-first B2B ecommerce platform known for its unique Virto Atomic Architecture™. In addition to more than 60 ready-to-use modules (e.g., catalog, cart, contracts, and B2B pricing), the platform allows users to re-purpose or build new modules on top of its core solution. Virto Atomic Architecture™ allows F&B enterprises to battle the risk of disruption and innovate for years without increasing the cost.

With the API-first Virto Commerce B2B food solution, teams of any size can promptly implement changes, add new modules, features, or filters, or integrate third-party functions. Thanks to Virto Commerce’s headless architecture, F&B companies can seamlessly manage multiple storefronts without affecting performance.

Examples of Virto Commerce F&B clients: Lavazza by Bluespresso, HEINEKEN, and De Klok Dranken.

The F&B B2B ecommerce is growing, and the industry’s highly competitive environment calls for continuous innovation and adaptability. To ensure that F&B enterprises can successfully and quickly adapt to market changes or even disrupt the market themselves, they must invest in an innovation-ready B2B food commerce platform.

Virto Commerce can be a great fit for an enterprise searching for a composable, future-proof food ecommerce B2B platform. With a trusted partner like Virto Commerce, F&B enterprises create seamless customer experiences within any business model—B2B, B2C, B2B2C, or DTC. Schedule your free consultation to learn more.