Organic Soda Brand Achieves Full Traceability in Just a Few Weeks

Fresh Fizz Sodas from Long Island needed to comply with traceability regulations and found the perfect solution. “Everything we sell now matches up with specific ingredient lots, so we know what our products cost, where the inputs came from, and which customers purchased the products. We get complete visibility,” says President Yoni Schwartz.

Organic honey-sweetened sodas sold nationwide

Fresh Fizz Sodas is an organic soda manufacturer from Long Island, New York. Driven by a passion for quenching thirst without additives and refined sugar, all their beverages are made using natural ingredients and sweetened with honey. Fresh Fizz Sodas are sold all over the US, including the popular grocery chain Sprouts.

President Yoni Schwartz started the company as a hobby in his kitchen, making different beverages with his wife as a side project while working in finance. When the business was founded, they planned to produce and sell light alcoholic beverages such as hard seltzers. However, getting the proper licenses proved to be a longer process than anticipated.

“While we were waiting and I had the production equipment and the necessary space, we started making these healthy sodas, which were starting to get popular right around then,” Schwartz says.

With a team of five full-time employees and a few part-time ones, the company manages to produce everything in-house and distribute their products nationwide.

Spreadsheets failed to provide traceability

Managing a nationwide beverage company with such a small team might sound like an impossible task. And while the company was run on spreadsheets during its first years of operation, Schwartz soon realized they needed a better system.

“Operating in a highly regulated industry, we need to track which ingredient lots go into which finished products and which customers bought those products,” Schwartz says. “This full traceability was also a key requirement for acquiring an organic food certification.”

Looking to move away from spreadsheets, Schwartz started researching solutions that would fulfill the needs of consumer packaged goods manufacturers. Through online searches and recommendations from others in the industry, he discovered MRPeasy.

“I wanted something that would provide the traceability we needed without being overly complex,” he says.

Schwartz also liked the fact that MRPeasy enables companies to get started without having to go through a demo and a sales pitch, as it has the necessary self-education materials freely available. 

“In fact, by checking out the educational materials, you get more time on your free trial,” he says.

Implementation took just a few weeks

Implementation started in March 2024, and the team went live with the new system in just a few weeks. Although some aspects of using the software, e.g., how to set up the bills of materials in terms of product quantity, took some thinking, Schwartz and his team managed to figure everything out on their own, with the help of MRPeasy’s online resources.

“It’s a simple program,” Director of Operations Thomas Perez chimes in, “In addition to the user manual and demo videos, the AI chatbot on MRPeasy’s website is great for answering any small questions that one might have.”

Achieving traceability and cost tracking without complications

Along with the full traceability provided by MRPeasy, the system has also helped Fresh Fizz Sodas with accurate cost tracking. While all vital events related to ingredient lots and product batches are recorded, so are the associated costs. This enables the company to know the actual cost of a product batch or unit, drill down into various cost components such as materials or labor, and make decisions that help reduce manufacturing costs. MRPeasy feeds accurate data, including COGS and inventory value, straight into Fresh Fizz’s accounting platform Xero, reducing the manual workload of accountants.

“Everything we sell now matches up with specific ingredient lots, so we know what our products cost, where the inputs came from, and which customers purchased the products. We get complete visibility,” Schwartz states.

Knowing the journey of a product from ingredient lots to final delivery gives Fresh Fizz Sodas the confidence that, should an issue occur somewhere in the supply chain, they would be able to identify the root cause and minimize the damage.

“If an ingredient had an issue, we would be able to organize a targeted product recall,” Schwartz maintains.

A balanced system for growing food and beverage manufacturers

MRPeasy has proven to be a well-balanced solution for Schwartz and his team—powerful enough to handle their needs, yet simple enough to be adopted quickly. According to Schwartz, MRPeasy fills the gap between basic spreadsheets and overly complex enterprise-grade ERP systems.

“What I found with MRPeasy is that it has this balance of user-friendliness and power. It’s robust enough for what we need but also pretty easy to pick up.”

The software is now deeply embedded in Fresh Fizz Sodas’ daily workflow, providing the traceability and usability they needed to take their operation to another level.

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