From ballet to broth: Bare Bones uses fancy footwork, and BILL, to meet skyrocketing demand

About

Customer

Bare Bones Broth sells $500,000 per month in nutritious food products across 5 sales channels with a staff of only 5 full-time employees.

Industry

Food Products

Challenge

Scaling to meet explosive celebrity-driven demand; supply-side crisis during early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Solution

BILL Accounts Payable

Accounting software integration

QuickBooks Enterprise

Results

• CEO time on Accounts Payables reduced over 83%
• Back-office stacks of paper invoices eliminated
• Paper checks moved to electronic payments
• Supply-chain issues resolved with no sales loss
• ROI from using BILL: Priceless. (In our experience - 1000:1 RO)

Growth / Transaction Volume:

• Growing at 60% YoY
• 1,500 Stores
• 80% Online Sales Growth YoY
• 60 payable transactions per month

Scrambling to meet unexpected demand led to a cluttered back office filled with towering stacks of paper

Katherine and Ryan started Bare Bones Broth as a side hustle, selling the chef-quality broth through a website created by a friend. When a celebrity chef made gourmet broth a buzzworthy sensation by selling it out of a window for $9 a cup in New York’s East Village, Bare Bones Broth wasn’t prepared to meet the sudden increase in demand.

"Payables went from being my whole job, probably 30 hours a week just managing stacks of paper, to maybe 5 hours a week. BILL enabled us to grow and optimize at a level we never would have been able to." —Katherine Harvey, Co-founder of Bare Bones Broth

Desperate to streamline their e-commerce, the team introduced a modern, digital tech stack, including BILL

“We hired a consultant to help us optimize our marketing for e-commerce,” Katherine told us. “He gave us tools and resources to help us be more efficient, and he was a huge advocate for BILL. As soon as he showed it to me, the decision to adopt it was a no-brainer.”

Adding BILL freed up hours of Katherine’s time while also freeing up their operations director. That allowed them to focus on running R&D, optimizing the cost of goods, and vetting new partners in their supply chain.

But one of the biggest advantages, Katherine told us, was the improved control over cash flow, especially with so many moving parts in their supply and distribution chain.

"If I'd had to worry about managing our cash flow during the early months of the pandemic, we would have dropped the ball 1,000%. But thanks to BILL, I was able to dedicate all those hours to our supply chain. In the end, there wasn’t any drop in sales." —Katherine Harvey, Co-founder of Bare Bones Broth

When COVID hit, the company faced a new Herculean task: keep the production line running despite slowdowns and rationing

Because Bare Bones Broth has so many points of distribution, the early days of the pandemic saw a quick shift from brick-and-mortar channels to online sales. Soon, Katherine and Ryan were getting desperate calls from stores begging for extra product to fill empty shelves. But the real problem wasn’t demand. It was supply.

"If I'd had to worry about managing our cash flow during the early months of the pandemic, we would have dropped the ball 1,000%. But thanks to BILL, I was able to dedicate all those hours to our supply chain. In the end, there wasn’t any drop in sales. It wasn’t even a blip. That's a testament to how great BILL is."

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