// AI for food distributors
AI for foodservice distributors, tested on orders and billbacks your team already worked.
For broadline and specialty houses delivering to restaurants, schools, hospitals and senior living kitchens. Pick one job: orders that arrive by text, voicemail, photo or email, or deviated pricing billbacks owed by manufacturers on contract sales. Whichever you choose, a free AI proof of concept tries it on copies of 20 to 30 examples your team has already handled. Nothing connects to your ERP, your routing or any portal, and the verdict belongs to your reviewer, whoever on your team knows that work best.
- Open jobs
- Messaged orders, or deviation billbacks
- You send
- 20 to 30 handled examples, copied, after the NDA
- Connected to
- Nothing: no ERP, routing tool or portal
- Never
- A reply to a chef or a claim to a manufacturer
- Decided by
- A reviewer the owner names
- Price
- A range now, a fixed figure before signing
// Jobs we would test
Four jobs inside a foodservice house
Orders from texts, voicemails and photos
A chef's text to your DSR, a voicemail left after close, a photo of the list on the walk-in door, matched to that customer's order guide and dated for the right route day.
See the order entry pageDeviated pricing billbacks
Sales to GPO members, contract feeders' accounts and chains at a manufacturer's deviated cost, drafted as billback lines for your claims analyst to check and file.
See the billbacks pageCredits at the door
Shorts, refusals and returns written on signed delivery tickets, drafted as credit memos against the right invoice lines for your credit desk.
See the credit memos pageContract price updates
New deviated costs and covered locations from manufacturers and buying groups, compared with the customer pricing you have loaded before the effective date.
See the contract pricing page// Why these two first
One job runs every night, the other is cash you are owed
Who buys from you decides both jobs. A 2006 federal court memorandum in Feesers v. Michael Foods describes a full line, or broadline, house whose customers include elementary schools, college dining, hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living, corporate cafeterias and restaurants. It also notes that food service management companies often sign prime distributor agreements, naming a primary house to supply the kitchens they run in a region. The account type shapes what lands on each order and which manufacturer owes you on the sale.
Orders still come in as words. US Foods' published customer policy strongly encourages customers to order through its electronic system. Many kitchens still order the old way: a chef finishes service, counts the walk-in and texts the DSR, the distributor sales rep on the account, who has to know that customer's guide, packs and route day before the cutoff. Each of those messages already has a matching order in your ERP, so the test is graded against your own history.
We are not the first to offer this. Ordering apps built for food distributors already sell AI that reads voicemails, texts, photos and handwritten notes. What we add is a check before you buy anything: drafts from your own past messages, scored by someone who works your desk.
You don't set the prices you bill back. A 2011 Court of Federal Claims opinion describes deviated pricing as terms the end customer negotiates with the manufacturer. Where the distributor is a middleman with no control over that price, it delivers at it and bills the manufacturer for the difference. The money is yours only once the claim is paid, and each filed claim with the manufacturer's payment beside it is an answer key the test can be scored against.
Supplier codes are getting more standard; chefs' words are not. IFDA belongs to the Foodservice GS1 US Standards Initiative, at work since 2009 bringing GS1 case barcodes and shared product data into foodservice. A billback line carrying the manufacturer's item code matches cleanly. A text about the good bacon doesn't, which is why the order job leans on each customer's guide.
// Across industries
Jobs compared with other industries
// How it runs
Choose a job, grade it, then decide
- Step 01
Send copies of old work
With the NDA signed, pick one job and copy us 20 to 30 old examples: order messages paired with the orders they became, or filed billbacks with their agreements, invoices and payments. Where originals have to stay inside, your team helps us make look-alikes.
- Step 02
Graded by your own reviewer
Before any file moves, the owner picks a reviewer and we write down the success criteria together, along with a price range for the live job. Then the reviewer compares each draft with the work your team actually did.
- Step 03
Live for a month, a person on every item
Once your reviewer says yes, the job moves to new orders or new contract sales for about 30 days. Every order is approved by a person before it posts, and every billback before it is filed. A second job, if you want one, is decided and priced on its own.
Priced per job: you get a range before the proof of concept and a fixed price before you sign.
The range comes from the first call and turns on volume: how many messaged orders your team keys each month, or how many billback lines go to manufacturers.
// Questions
What food distributors ask
Our customers already order through an app. What is left to test?
We run Entrée, Produce Pro or a Dynamics-based food ERP. Does the test need it?
We are a specialty house in produce, meat or seafood. Does this fit?
Will anything reach our customers, manufacturers or buying groups?
Who usually makes a good reviewer?
Rob Eason, founder
// Book a call with Rob
Bring a night of order texts, or a stack of short-paid claims.
In half an hour Rob will want to know your company and what you do there, whether orders or billbacks come first, and about how many of them your team works by hand each month. Hold every message, agreement and claim file until the NDA is signed.
- Co-owned a 60-employee financial services firm and sold his share to his partner.
- Ran GOSO Technologies, a Boston solar company rated 5/5 across 24 Google reviews.
- 5/5 across 83 reviews in HighLevel's Certified Admin Directory.
- 4.3/5 from 6 Google reviews of Massmarket AI.
- Every directory and Google review, critical ones included, is shown word for word at massmarket.ai/reviews.
- Takes every proof-of-concept call himself.