Fruit Coating Manufacturer Ditches Enterprise ERP Without Losing Control

Apeel Sciences implemented an enterprise-grade ERP to manage fast growth. Instead, the system incurred costs that exceeded the value it provided. Then they found a functional solution for a fraction of the cost and complexity.

Case study at a glance

Company: Apeel Sciences

Industry: Food

Product: Plant-based coatings that extend the shelf life of fresh produce

Location: Goleta, California, USA

Company size: Nearly 100 employees

Previous system: Enterprise-level ERP

Pain points: High software costs, excessive ERP complexity, difficult usability, costly system administration

Why MRPeasy: Lower cost, cloud-based deployment, ease of use, security, flexibility, traceability, API access

Implementation: 4–5 months, with initial consultant support

Key functions: Purchasing, inventory management, BOMs, manufacturing orders, quality inspections, lot traceability, custom fields, user permissions, and API integration

Results: Lower software costs, 100% of manufacturing workflows managed through MRPeasy, one-step-forward and one-step-back traceability, easier system use, and flexible integration with the wider software ecosystem

Developing a coating that extends the shelf-life of fresh produce

Apeel Sciences is a California-based food technology company that makes plant-based coatings designed to extend the shelf life of fresh produce. Its technology can be applied to products such as avocados, oranges, mandarins, and lemons, helping fruit stay ripe longer, reach consumers in better condition, and thereby reduce food waste and the use of single-use plastics throughout the supply chain.

Founded in 2012 by scientist James Rogers, the company grew out of research conducted at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Today, Apeel is headquartered in Goleta, near Santa Barbara, and employs nearly 100 people.

Big-name ERP proved too complex and expensive

Operating multiple business entities around the world, the company has to manage the manufacturing, inventory, quality, traceability, and financial requirements that come with an international food technology business.

“During a period of fast growth around 2020, we implemented a big-name ERP,” says Dave Giannini, Chief Software Architect. “While it covered our functionality requirements, it ultimately proved too complex and expensive for us.”

As the company looked for ways to optimize costs, the team began searching for a more affordable cloud-based solution that could still meet its requirements for security, usability, and flexibility. The team conducted a market search and evaluated several manufacturing software solutions.

“At the end of the evaluation, MRPeasy was by far the best solution for us,” Giannini says.

Implementation took 4-5 months

Apeel Sciences began implementing MRPeasy in June 2025 and went live by the end of October, completing the transition in around 4-5 months.

One of the main challenges was migrating data. The team had to extract data from the existing system, map fields to MRPeasy, and import everything in the correct order. To simplify the process, Apeel chose not to migrate its entire historical database. Instead, it focused on the information needed to continue operations, such as current inventory balances, rather than bringing over years of history.

The technical migration was only one part of the challenge. Employees also had to adjust to a completely different system, having learned how to use the old one just a few years ago. According to Giannini, the resistance gradually disappeared as users became familiar with MRPeasy.

“Over time, everybody realized how easy MRPeasy is to use,” he says. “Now, they love the product compared to the previous one.”

Apeel also received outside help during the early stages of implementation. Business Solution Providers, an experienced MRPeasy consultancy, worked with the company several times a week during the first couple of weeks, helping the team understand how to translate its existing processes into the new system. After that initial guidance, Apeel was able to continue the implementation independently.

100% of manufacturing flows through MRPeasy

Today, MRPeasy sits at the center of Apeel’s manufacturing operation. The software is used across the company’s core manufacturing workflow, from purchasing materials to producing and inspecting finished goods. The company relies heavily on inventory management to track materials and finished products, while bills of materials define the materials and quantities going into the products. Manufacturing orders then tie the process together, connecting purchasing, production, and quality activities, including inspections of incoming materials and completed products. 

“One hundred percent of the manufacturing workflow is going through MRPeasy,” Giannini states.

The company handles customer orders through a separate front-end system, which is synced with MRPeasy via API, while Xledger is used for multi-entity financial reporting and Grafana for business intelligence.

Rather than having employees work with separate dashboards in every business system, Apeel consolidates information into a single company-wide business intelligence dashboard. This gives users one place to monitor business activity while MRPeasy continues to handle the underlying manufacturing and inventory processes.

Lower costs and better traceability

One of the major benefits Apeel Sciences has realized since moving to MRPeasy is cost savings. Reducing software expenses was one of the main reasons for replacing their previous ERP, and according to Giannini, the transition delivered the savings the company had expected.

“That was the entire reason why we did it, and it played out just the way we’d hoped,” he says.

Because Apeel operates in the food industry, traceability is also particularly important. The company uses MRPeasy to maintain one-step-forward, one-step-back traceability across the materials and products involved in treating fresh produce.

“MRPeasy enables us to trace what goes into our coatings, which produce was treated, and where that produce ends up,” Giannini says.

For customers, that means better visibility and control behind the scenes, supporting the quality and traceability requirements expected throughout the food supply chain.

Another vital factor in choosing MRPeasy was security. Giannini set up user permissions in MRPeasy and granted access to specific IP addresses via its own VPN and two-factor authentication, making access impossible for those without proper authorization.

The new software’s customizability played a major part in its selection, as well. Apeel was able to add required fields to purchase orders, sales orders, and manufacturing workflows, making it easier to allocate transactions correctly and reconcile financial data across its international operations.

Move beyond spreadsheets before they become a bottleneck

Giannini says spreadsheets can make perfect sense for very small companies. But as a business grows and more people need to work with the same information, maintaining history, controlling changes, and extending spreadsheet-based processes becomes increasingly cumbersome.

“If you’re a small company with maybe two or three employees, then spreadsheets make perfect sense,” he says. “As you start to grow and you have more people touching everything, it becomes more difficult.”

For growing manufacturers, he sees dedicated manufacturing software as a much more scalable option.

“At the price we’re paying for MRPeasy, it’s very reasonable,” he says. “It allows you to extend your processes without needing any background in software engineering.”

Giannini also points to usability as an important consideration when moving away from spreadsheets or replacing another ERP system.

“That is why MRPeasy is a good choice,” he says. “It’s easy to learn, and it feels very intuitive.”

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