ERP for food & beverage companies that can't trace a recall on guesswork.
Custom ERP for food and beverage manufacturers — lot genealogy, formulation and yield tracking, catch-weight billing, and shelf-life management built for how your plant actually runs.
Generic manufacturing ERP doesn't know what a lot is.
Most food and beverage companies start on QuickBooks plus a spreadsheet for batch records, or graduate into a generic manufacturing ERP that treats every input as a fixed, countable unit. Neither survives contact with how food actually gets made.
Ingredients arrive by catch weight, not exact count. Formulations have yield variance — the same recipe produces a slightly different output every batch, and your costing has to account for that or it's fiction. Shelf life means inventory has to pick FEFO (first-expired, first-out), not FIFO. And when a recall hits, you need to trace every finished-good lot back to its raw-material lots and forward to every customer it shipped to — in minutes, with FSMA 204 now setting the bar, not after three days of digging through paper batch sheets.
The generic ERP route usually means bolting a food-safety module onto a system that wasn't built around lot genealogy in the first place — it technically works until the first real recall, then it doesn't.
Traceability and formulation as the data model, not an add-on.
We build the plant floor's actual unit of work — lots — into the core of the system: every raw material lot, every batch, every finished-good lot carries full forward and backward genealogy from the moment it's received to the moment it ships. A recall query that used to take days runs in minutes.
Formulations track yield and waste per batch, so your costing reflects what the plant actually produced, not the recipe card. Catch-weight items bill on actual received or shipped weight, not a fixed unit price. Inventory picks FEFO automatically based on real expiration dates, and quality holds block a lot from shipping the moment a QC result fails — before it becomes a customer's problem.
Honest tradeoff: if you run a single-SKU co-packing line with no real recall exposure and a food-ERP suite like Aptean or NetSuite's food edition already covers your formulation needs, that's a reasonable buy — you don't need a custom build to track one recipe. Custom earns its cost once you're managing multiple product lines, co-manufacturing relationships, or compliance requirements the off-the-shelf module doesn't quite fit.
We ship the modules you need first, then add the rest. Most clients don't need every module on day one.
Lot traceability & genealogy
Full forward and backward trace from raw material lot to finished-good lot to customer shipment — built to answer an FDA or FSMA 204 recall request in minutes, not days.
Recall management
One query isolates every affected lot, every customer it shipped to, and every downstream lot that used it as an ingredient — with a documented hold/release workflow.
Formulation & recipe management
Recipes with real yield and waste tracking per batch, so costing reflects actual plant output, not the theoretical recipe card.
Catch-weight & variable-weight billing
Ingredients received and products shipped by actual weight, not a fixed unit count — billing and inventory both reconcile to the scale, not an estimate.
Shelf-life & FEFO inventory
Expiration dates drive picking automatically (first-expired, first-out), with configurable shelf-life rules per SKU and automatic aging alerts before product goes bad on the shelf.
Allergen & compliance tracking
Allergen data tied to every ingredient and formulation, surfaced automatically on labels and specs — and flagged if a changeover risks cross-contact.
Quality management & holds
QC test results tied directly to the lot; a failed result triggers an automatic hold that blocks shipment until released, with a full audit trail for inspections.
Co-packing & co-manufacturing
Track owned inventory processed at a third-party co-packer, or a customer's inventory processed at your plant, without losing lot genealogy across the handoff.
Cold chain & warehouse management
Temperature-zone-aware putaway and picking, with chain-of-custody logging for anything that needs to stay in a documented temperature range.
How a custom food & beverage ERP gets built.
Same structure every time. We ship the first module to your team in 4–8 weeks, then build the rest while they're already using it.
- 01
Discover
1–2 weeks. We sit with your team, map workflows, and pick the first module to ship.
- 02
Architect
1–2 weeks. Data model, integrations, deployment topology. Documented before any code.
- 03
Build slice 1
3–5 weeks. First production module — usually the highest-pain part of your current workflow.
- 04
Build slices 2–N
1–3 months. Additional modules deployed continuously. Each integrates with the existing data model.
- 05
Run
Ongoing. We stay on after launch — bug fixes, new features, integrations as your business changes.
Built to integrate with the systems you already use.
The integrations below come up most often for food & beverage operators. Anything with an API is fair game — these are just the common ones.
- Scale & catch-weight hardware (Mettler Toledo, Avery Weigh-Tronix)
- EDI for retail and distributor customers (850/856/810)
- QuickBooks Online / Xero / Sage Intacct
- Avalara (multi-state / multi-jurisdiction tax)
- Food safety & QMS platforms (SafetyChain, TraceGains)
- Cold storage & 3PL warehouse systems
- Label printing & GS1 barcode systems
- Route & delivery planning (for DSD operations)
- Payment processors (Stripe, ACH)
- BI / reporting (Metabase, Looker)
Custom ERP for other industries.
Modern, boring, hireable.
We build on standard tools your future team will be able to hire for. No proprietary platforms.
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- React
- Tailwind
- Postgres
- Prisma
- Drizzle
- Redis
- Vercel
- Railway
- Fly.io
- Docker
- Clerk
- WorkOS
- Auth0
- Stripe
- Plaid
- QuickBooks API
- Postgres views
- Metabase
- Recharts
The proof we ship ERPs.
Clear answers
for complex builds.
Clear answers on timelines, pricing, ownership, and what shipping actually looks like with a senior engineering team.
Those are solid, mature products, and if your formulation needs and compliance requirements fit their model, buying is the right call — we'll tell you that in a discovery call if it's true. Custom starts winning once you're running multiple product lines, co-manufacturing relationships, or workflow quirks the packaged module bends around instead of fitting.
A single query returns every finished-good lot affected, every raw-material lot behind it, and every customer shipment it went to — typically under a minute, versus the days a paper or spreadsheet-based trace usually takes. That speed is the entire point of building genealogy into the data model instead of bolting it on.
Yes — FSMA 204 requires Critical Tracking Event records (harvesting, cooling, initial packing, shipping) for high-risk foods on the FDA's Food Traceability List, with fast lookup on request. A system built around lot genealogy from day one produces those records as a byproduct of normal operations, not a separate compliance project.
Inventory and invoicing both key off the actual weight recorded at receiving or shipping — pulled directly from scale hardware where possible — instead of a fixed per-unit price. You bill and cost what was really received or shipped, which matters a lot when a case of chicken thighs never weighs exactly what the label says.
Usually $70k–$280k and 3–5 months for lot traceability, formulation/yield tracking, and your top integrations (scale hardware, EDI, a food-safety platform). Multi-plant rollouts and full co-manufacturing support are common phase-two additions.
Tell us your current systems, what's breaking, and what you'd want a fitted ERP to do — we'll come back with a written scope and a fixed quote.