Customer story
How Nice Coffee stopped worrying about missed wholesale orders
Doug Meils and Elliott Lau run Nice Coffee Roasters and Nice Cafe in Los Angeles. Their wholesale orders used to come in by text, email and Instagram DM. Now they all come through one place.
Filmed at the Nice Coffee roastery in Los Angeles. Quotes on this page are taken from the video.
Doug and Elliott both started their coffee careers in LA. After about a year of talking it over, they decided to go into business together. Doug roasts, and as they tell it, Nice Coffee would never have had a roasting side without him.
Wholesale picked up faster than they expected, with more cafes reaching out. Every one of those accounts ordered however it liked, and Doug was the one keeping track.
“Before Crate, a normal wholesale week was a little bit chaotic. Some would text me their orders, some would email me their orders. I've gotten orders through Instagram. I would tell Elliott like, 'At some point, I'm going to miss an order.'”
What changed
Their wholesale customers now order from their own Crate portal. They sign in, see their own prices and check out. As they put it, ordering now “feels like shopping,” where other wholesale portals can feel more like a spreadsheet.
New cafes apply through the same portal, so applications “go straight into the program rather than us having to receive it.”
The bigger change was Doug's week. Adding up roast totals used to take a few hours, so he saved it for a separate day. With every order already in one list, he now does it right after deliveries.
“The number one thing I hear is, 'Oh, that was really easy.' I always had like a, 'Oh, I'm forgetting something.' And I don't have that anymore.”
The invoicing switch
Moving invoicing was the part they dreaded. Would they have to redo everything? Could they see when a customer opened an invoice? Could invoices go out at a set time? It turned out to be a non-event.
“Switching invoicing systems was remarkably easy. Customers definitely didn't notice.”
They also mention support: “Super fast responses, very fast fixes.” And when asked if another roaster should make the switch, the answer was short.
“Any roaster or whoever asked if they should switch to Crate, I would say yes, 100%.”
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