Aptean Food & Beverage ERP Case Study: Pizza Joe’s

Joe Seminara, affectionately known as “Pizza Joe,” opened the doors of the first Pizza Joe's in New Castle, Pennsylvania in 1980 with a dream to create a pizza haven for the community. Fast forward to today, and Pizza Joe's is not just a culinary cornerstone; it's a dynamic force with 39 locations in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. As a subsidiary of Classi-Co Foods, Pizza Joe's orchestrates a seamless operation in its New Castle facility—repacking various frozen, cool and dry ingredients and crafting frozen dough for its franchises.

To pave the way for further growth, the company realized the need for modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology to replace its outdated system and help address the operational challenges it faced.

The Challenge

Pizza Joe's major challenge was rooted in an outdated system—an operational bottleneck lacking essential functionality and delivering a subpar user experience. This had resulted in several pain points across the organization:

• Limited visibility into financial data, impacted decision-making

• Inaccurate inventory counts required a costly reconciliation process

• Lack of cloud deployment limited off-site accessibility

“We wanted something cloud-based that would make it quicker to read reports and manage inventory tracking,” commented Jerry Dugan, Pizza Joe’s controller. “We also really wanted to track down what the frozen dough actually costs us to make—that way we can make sure it works for us financially, but we can also offer a competitive price to our customers.”

The Solution

With a clear idea of the challenges that needed to be solved, Pizza Joe’s internal team conducted an extensive six-month long research project before selecting Aptean Food & Beverage ERP—the ideal fit for the company’s needs.

Aptean‘s specialized ERP for food and beverage businesses offered:

• Flexible cloud deployment option

• Robust industry-specific features

• Greater visibility into stock, sales and financial data

• Easy-to-use intuitive interface with user-friendly dashboards

“Aptean Food & Beverage ERP was the best solution we saw,” said Jerry Dugan, Pizza Joe’s controller. “And that’s very evident now that we’re using it on a daily basis.”

The Implementation

During the implementation phase, Pizza Joe’s benefited from Aptean’s collaborative approach and experienced in-house specialists—providing guidance every step of the way to secure a smooth deployment.

“The implementation experience was great,” Dugan said. “The Aptean team members were extremely helpful in explaining things at a level that I would understand. My expertise is in accounting, not software, so it was difficult to understand sometimes—but they made it very simple to stay on top of it.”

In addition, on-site support from an Aptean team member helped ensure that Pizza Joe’s was able to hit the ground running immediately at go-live, realizing the benefits of the system and return on investment (ROI) as soon as possible.

“That was super helpful because there are certain things that some of our workers had questions about, and the Aptean team members were able to answer those questions quickly,” continued Dugan.

The Result

After implementing Aptean Food & Beverage ERP, Pizza Joe's has been able to unlock several key benefits that have transformed operations and processes for the better.

• Fully modernized solution helping to ensure robust ROI

• High degree of data accessibility facilitates more informed purchasing decisions

• Comprehensive inventory management features boost precision

With Aptean's food ERP, Pizza Joe's has been able to increase precision in its dough manufacturing—eliminating guesswork, optimizing freezer storage and avoiding shortages or excesses.

“As far as dough ball production, Aptean Food & Beverage ERP has been very helpful because we’re able to give our team exact quantities and sizes for production,” said Dugan. “Before, it was just random—sometimes you ended up with too much, sometimes you ended up with too little.”

Additionally, Aptean’s food ERP simplified profit margin management by allowing for greater flexibility in setting percentages for various items. This has not only saved valuable time for Pizza Joe’s employees, but also helped to ensure that the customers’ price is exactly what it should be.

“Now, I can just go in and set a markup—before, that required a lot of busy work,” Duan said. “With this new functionality, we can be sure we’re charging the proper price, and that’s been great.”

With financial visibility improved throughout the operation, Pizza Joe's has also been able to eliminate the expense of hiring outside auditors for year-end reconciliations, further helping to improve profitability.

Conclusion

The operational improvements that Pizza Joe’s has realized through the implementation of Aptean Food & Beverage ERP stand as a testament to the power of purpose-built, cloud-based software in a digital transformation journey. Aptean’s food ERP has delivered immediate process improvements and cost savings, and, as the company looks to implement additional inventory scanning features, it promises to provide even more value.

“As far as return on investment, the system is going to pay for itself,” Dugan remarked. “It saves our staff time on simple tasks that we no longer need to complete manually. And as far as growth, we’re better able to see how our stores are doing based on their orders. I really do think it was the right move to make.”

“It’s good to look back on it now and think about all the good things that have come from it,” added Dugan. “There’s a lot of smaller businesses that be afraid to make a jump like this, but our journey is proof that it’s worth it.”

Ready To Grab Your Slice of the Action?

By combining specialized capabilities designed for food and beverage manufacturers with cloud deployment and a by-your-side approach to implementation and support, Aptean’s offering is ideal for businesses looking to power their digital transformation.

No matter what food or beverage vertical you operate in—from fresh produce and dairy, to baked goods and meat—we’re ready to help you reduce costs, boost profitability and drive growth. With a range of purpose-built features including production planning, allergen management, food traceability, quality control and supply chain management, our food ERP can help you optimize your operation from end to end.

In addition, you can benefit from our industry experience and technical expertise with our broader solutions ecosystem that includes overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), product lifecycle management (PLM), route optimization software and business intelligence (BI) tools. So, wherever you are in your digital transformation journey, we’re ready to help you take your business to the next level.

To help you get started and take that next step, we have a range of tools and resources:

• Take our food and beverage health assessment quiz to help you identify where technology can improve your operations.

• Download this request for proposal template to simplify your search for the right food ERP.

• Read more success stories from food and beverage companies like Pizza Joe’s.

Get in touch with our expert teams to find out more about Aptean Food & Beverage ERP or schedule your personalized demo.