Odoo for food and drink manufacturers and distributors
Make it, sell it, deliver it. One system for your whole food business.
Odoo ERP for UK food and drink producers who sell B2B and B2C across web, Amazon, phone and doorstep, and deliver with their own vans and couriers. Recipes, batches, rounds, labels, stock and accounts, finally in one place.
- Official Odoo Partner
- Odoo certified
- ISO 27001 and ISO 9001
- UK-based team
Who it's for
Built for food businesses that make, pack and deliver.
If you produce food or drink, sell it through several channels and run your own deliveries, this solution was designed around the way you work.
- Fish and seafood processors
- Butchers and meat processors
- Bakeries and patisseries
- Dairy, cheese and eggs
- Ready meals and prepared foods
- Frozen food home delivery
- Breweries, distilleries and drinks
- Confectionery and snacks
- Fresh produce and farm foods
- Wholesale and foodservice suppliers
The market
The UK's largest manufacturing sector. Its SMEs are under the most pressure.
Costs, labour shortages and customer expectations are rising faster than headcount. The food businesses pulling ahead are replacing spreadsheets and legacy tools with connected systems.
Sources: Food and Drink Federation, May 2025; Trustwell State of the Food Tech Stack survey.
The challenge
Sound familiar? The problems we hear from food businesses every week.
Growth adds channels, rounds and products faster than old systems can cope. Here is what goes wrong, and how the solution fixes it.
Orders arrive in five different places
Web shop, Amazon, phone orders, reps and doorstep sales all land in separate tools, then get keyed in again.
How we fix it: every channel flows into one order queue with the right price list, delivery date and round.
Delivery rounds planned on spreadsheets
Cut-offs, van capacity and late orders are managed from memory and whiteboards, so mistakes reach the customer.
How we fix it: rounds and delivery batches in Odoo, with cut-off rules, van and driver allocation and printed driver sheets.
No real view of yield or margin
You know what raw material costs per kilo, but not what each finished product earned after trim, waste and packaging.
How we fix it: recipe and yield bills of materials record actual consumption, so every batch shows true cost and margin.
Traceability that would not survive a recall
Lot numbers live on paper sheets. Tracing one ingredient batch to every customer takes hours, sometimes days.
How we fix it: lot and expiry tracking from goods-in to doorstep. Trace any batch forwards or backwards in minutes.
Buying perishables on gut feel
Over-order and stock goes to waste. Under-order and you let customers down on your busiest days.
How we fix it: replenishment driven by confirmed orders, min and max rules and demand forecasts, with supplier lead times built in.
Packing errors and handwritten labels
Boxes go out over weight, chilled and frozen get mixed, and couriers are booked one parcel at a time.
How we fix it: custom packing rules, automatic box splits, bulk courier labels and one-click printing to label printers.
Card payments on a separate terminal
Call centre staff key card details into another system, then match payments to orders by hand.
How we fix it: a virtual payment terminal inside the sales order, so every payment is linked to its order.
Complaints lost in inboxes
Quality issues and missed deliveries sit in emails and notebooks, so the root causes never get fixed.
How we fix it: helpdesk tickets tied to the customer, order, product and batch, with SLAs and complaint analytics.
Regular customers drift away unnoticed
Nobody spots that a regular has stopped ordering until the account has already gone quiet.
How we fix it: automated customer lifecycle stages flag at-risk customers for a call before they are lost.
A patchwork of legacy tools
An old CRM, Access databases, bolt-on reports and spreadsheets, held together by the one person who knows how it all works.
How we fix it: one Odoo platform with shared data, role-based access and reports everyone can trust.
The solution
From order to doorstep, in one connected flow.
Every step shares the same customers, products, stock and batches. Nothing is keyed in twice, and every team works from the same live information.
- CaptureOrders from web, Amazon, phone, reps and door
- AllocateTo a van round or courier by date and postcode
- ProduceBatch sheets from recipes, with yields and lots
- Pick and packPacking rules, box splits and labels
- DispatchVan loading, driver sheets and courier manifests
- Invoice and payAutomatic invoicing, card payments, credit control
- Care and retainTickets, lifecycle stages and repeat orders
Built on Odoo 19 Enterprise and extended with ThoughtLogik modules for delivery rounds, packing rules and food-specific reporting.
See it in action
Real screens from a working food ERP.
Scroll to follow an order from the app menu to the driver's delivery note. This is what your team would use every day.
- 1
One ERP, every team
Round Management sits alongside Sales, Manufacturing, Inventory, Accounting, Helpdesk and Fleet in Odoo 19.
- 2
Orders allocated to rounds
Every order carries its delivery round, round batch, delivery date and time slot from the moment it is taken.
- 3
Drops on the map
See customers and deliveries by area to plan rounds and spot gaps in coverage.
- 4
Buy against demand
Required quantities from confirmed orders, grouped by supplier, with one-click purchase orders.
- 5
Production sheets
Fresh, chilled and frozen quantities to produce for each site and delivery date.
- 6
Traceable box labels
Round, product, use-by date, allergens, catch area and barcode, printed straight from the order.
- 7
Driver delivery notes
Each drop with items, value and payment capture, printed per round for the driver.
- 8
Live production insight
Most produced products and order counts, updated as batches are completed.
Screens from a current ThoughtLogik Odoo 19 implementation for a UK seafood business. Customer details have been blurred.
What's included
Everything a food manufacturer and distributor needs.
Ten connected capability areas, configured around your products, channels and deliveries.
Order capture across every channel
Sell B2B and B2C from one catalogue, with the right prices and delivery options for every customer.
- eCommerce: Odoo eCommerce, or integrate Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce
- Marketplaces: Amazon through Odoo's Amazon Connector, plus other marketplaces through connectors
- Call centre: fast order entry showing last orders, stock and alternative products
- Door and field sales: mobile order taking for reps and drivers
- Trade portal: B2B account approval, trade price lists and payment terms
- Virtual payment terminal: take card payments against the order
Delivery rounds and dispatch
Run your own fleet like a logistics operation, with every order allocated to the right van.
- Rounds with depots, delivery days, capacity and alternative rounds
- Delivery batches per date with cut-offs and late order flags
- Orders allocated to the right round by customer and postcode
- Van and driver allocation, driver sheets and reverse-order load lists
- Integration with route optimisation apps
- Proof of delivery and failed delivery reason codes
Batch manufacturing and recipes
Recipes, yields and batches that reflect how food is really made.
- Recipes as multi-level bills of materials, including kits, hampers and gift boxes
- Yield and by-product modelling, for example whole fish to fillets and trim
- Batch production sheets per delivery run, split by fresh, chilled and frozen
- Shop floor tablets for operatives, with sign-off
- Work centres, routings and labour costing
- Quality checks at critical control points
Inventory and multi-site warehousing
Real-time stock across every site, room and temperature zone.
- Multiple warehouses, depots and stock locations
- Chilled, frozen and ambient zones with automatic putaway rules
- Lot, batch and expiry tracking with first-expired-first-out picking
- Two and three-step receipts and deliveries
- Barcode scanning and mobile stock counts
- Bought-in products distributed alongside your own
Purchasing, replenishment and forecasting
Buy the right quantity of perishable stock, at the right time.
- Automated reorder rules with minimum and maximum levels
- Demand-based buying from confirmed orders per delivery day
- Master production schedule and demand forecasts using sales history and seasonality
- Supplier price lists, lead times and approvals
- Record what actually arrived and match supplier bills
- Alerts when stock hits reorder points
Packing, labels and shipping
Pack right first time and get parcels out of the door faster.
- Custom packing rules for weight limits, temperature separation and box splits
- Label and delivery note printing through Odoo IoT, including Zebra printers
- Scales and barcode scanners on the packing bench
- Carriers such as DPD, Royal Mail, DHL and UPS, directly or through Sendcloud
- Bulk courier labels, manifests and tracking numbers
- Batch, use-by and allergen details on labels
Accounting and finance
UK-ready finance that updates itself as goods move.
- UK accounting with Making Tax Digital VAT returns
- Bank feeds and reconciliation
- Invoices generated automatically on delivery
- Customer statements, aged debt and credit control
- Three-way matching of purchase orders, receipts and bills
- Margin by product, customer, channel and round
Customer care and lifecycle
Keep customers happy and ordering, week after week.
- Helpdesk tickets linked to customer, order, product and batch
- Ticket types for complaints, delivery issues and quality
- SLAs, escalation rules and complaint analytics
- Customer lifecycle stages: new, active, at risk and lapsed
- UK postcode address lookup on every customer record
- Email and SMS campaigns to the right segments
People and fleet
Manage the team and the vans that keep deliveries moving.
- Employee records, contracts, shifts and leave
- Training records with renewal alerts, for example food hygiene certificates
- Drivers linked to vans and rounds
- Fleet register for refrigerated vans, with services, MOTs and costs
- Mileage and fuel tracking
- Call centre performance and commission views
Reporting and dashboards
Live numbers for every team, without exporting to spreadsheets.
- Dashboards for sales, production, stock, purchasing, fleet and finance
- Sales by channel, round and customer segment
- Daily production and fresh stock requirement reports
- Dock, driver and courier reports rebuilt from your legacy system
- Scheduled reports by email
- Role-based access, so everyone sees what they need
B2B and B2C
Trade and consumer customers, side by side.
Run wholesale accounts and home-delivery customers on one platform, without compromising either.
Trade customers
Restaurants, retailers, caterers and wholesalers.
- Trade price lists, volume breaks and customer-specific prices
- Account approval and credit limits
- Payment terms, statements and credit control
- Standing and repeat orders
- Trade web portal with reorder from history
- Consolidated invoicing
Consumer customers
Home delivery, online shoppers and doorstep regulars.
- Web shop and marketplace orders with card payment
- Delivery days by round and postcode
- Phone orders with the last order on screen
- Promotions, discounts and loyalty
- Lifecycle stages and win-back campaigns
- Nationwide courier delivery with tracking
Integrations and devices
Connected to the channels, carriers and kit you already use.
We use Odoo's native connectors wherever they exist, and build robust integrations where they do not.
Sales channels
- Odoo eCommerce
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
- BigCommerce
- Amazon
- Other marketplaces
- B2B trade portal
Carriers and routing
- DPD
- Royal Mail
- Parcelforce
- DHL
- UPS
- Sendcloud
- Route optimisation apps
Payments and finance
- Virtual terminal
- Stripe
- Adyen
- Worldpay
- Bank feeds
- MTD VAT
Devices
- Odoo IoT Box
- Zebra label printers
- Weighing scales
- Barcode scanners
- Shop floor tablets
- Office printers
Moving from legacy tools? We migrate customers, products, recipes, rounds, open orders and opening balances, then run old and new side by side before you switch.
Food safety and compliance
Audit-ready traceability, without the paperwork.
Capture the evidence your customers, auditors and regulators expect as part of everyday work, not as an extra job at the end of the week.
One step back, one step forward
Every lot linked to the supplier delivery it came from and every customer it reached, as UK food law requires.
Allergens and labelling
Ingredient and allergen data held on the product and printed on labels, supporting PPDS (Natasha's Law) requirements.
Shelf life and expiry
Use-by and best-before dates tracked per lot, with first-expired-first-out picking and expiry alerts.
Temperature zones
Chilled, frozen and ambient stock kept in the right locations with automatic putaway rules.
Quality and HACCP records
Quality checks at goods-in, production and dispatch, with pass and fail records ready for audits such as BRCGS and SALSA.
Secure by design
Delivered by an ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials certified team, with role-based access and full audit trails.
Customer story
One ERP in place of 8 systems and multiple spreadsheets.
How a UK seafood processor and home-delivery distributor is bringing its whole operation into Odoo.
Every order, round, batch and invoice in one place.
The business sells to households through its own van rounds, to trade customers through a B2B web shop, and to consumers nationwide by next-day courier. Orders arrive from two online stores, a busy call centre and doorstep sales.
Before: the cost of disconnected systems
- Customers, stock, production and accounts spread across 8 legacy systems and multiple spreadsheets
- The same order keyed in more than once across systems
- Rounds, driver sheets and fresh fish orders built by hand every week
- Courier labels booked one parcel at a time
- No single view of stock, margin or customer history
What one ERP changes
- One source of truth for customers, orders, stock, production and finance
- Orders entered once, whatever the channel, and flowing straight to the right round or courier
- Rounds, packing lists and driver sheets generated by the system, not by spreadsheet
- Fresh stock bought against real demand, reducing waste and shortages
- Courier labels and manifests in bulk, printed straight from dispatch
- Complaints linked to the order and batch, so problems are fixed at the source
The result
How we deliver
A phased roadmap that keeps you trading while you switch.
Every engagement follows SCALE, our five-phase delivery framework. For food businesses we sequence the build so your most critical operations are proven first.
- 1Discover and designMap your channels, rounds, recipes and reports. Agree scope, milestones and cost.
- 2Core foundationAccounting, warehouses, products, customers, rounds and sales order entry.
- 3Operations corePacking rules, batch production, dispatch, replenishment and payments.
- 4Shop floor and couriersPurchasing, putaway, printers and scanners, courier labels and manifests.
- 5Channels and peopleWeb shop and marketplace integrations, route optimisation, HR, fleet and helpdesk.
- 6Test, migrate, go liveEnd-to-end testing, data migration, a parallel run and on-site hypercare.
What changes
What food businesses gain.
The improvements our food and drink clients target when they move to one connected system.
No more rekeying
Every order is entered once, whatever the channel.
Less waste
Buy and produce to real demand and shelf life.
Faster, accurate dispatch
Rounds, packing and labels run from the system, not from memory.
True margin
Profit by product, customer, channel and round.
FAQs
Questions food businesses ask us
Can't see your question? Book a free call and speak to a certified Odoo consultant.
Is Odoo suitable for a small or mid-sized food manufacturer?
Yes. Odoo is modular, so you start with the apps you need and add more as you grow. It suits food and drink businesses from around 10 staff to several hundred, and it replaces the patchwork of CRM, stock, production and accounting tools most growing producers rely on.
Can one system handle our own van rounds and national couriers?
Yes. We configure delivery rounds and dated delivery batches for your own fleet, and carrier integrations for parcels. Each order is allocated to a round or a courier service automatically, based on the customer, postcode and delivery date.
Do we have to replace our website or leave Amazon?
No. We can integrate your existing Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce store, or move you onto Odoo eCommerce. Amazon orders flow in through Odoo's Amazon Connector, and other marketplaces can be connected too.
How does Odoo handle recipes, yields and batch production?
Recipes are held as bills of materials, including multi-level recipes, kits and by-products. Yields are captured per batch, so you see real consumption, waste and cost. Lots and expiry dates are recorded from goods-in to dispatch for full traceability.
Can Odoo print labels and work with our scales and scanners?
Yes. The Odoo IoT Box connects label printers such as Zebra models, office printers, barcode scanners and scales, so box labels, delivery notes and courier labels print from the right workflow step.
How long does an implementation take?
It depends on scope. A focused setup can go live in a few months, while a full order-to-doorstep implementation with custom rounds, integrations and data migration typically runs over six to eight months in phases, so value arrives before the final go-live.
Can you migrate data from our legacy systems?
Yes. We migrate customers, products, recipes, suppliers, rounds, open orders and opening balances, validate them with your team and run the old and new systems in parallel before switching over.
Do our drivers and warehouse staff all need Odoo licences?
Not always. Staff who only need HR records, such as many drivers, can be managed without a full user licence, and shared shop floor devices reduce licence needs. We size licences as part of the design phase.
Start your project
Ready to run your food business on one system?
Tell us about your products, channels and deliveries. A certified Odoo consultant will get back to you within one working day with practical next steps.
- Free, no-obligation consultation
- Review of your order-to-doorstep process
- Clear plan, milestones and pricing