Extract discovery insights

Synthesis for the CPO

Headline

The evidence points more strongly to a delivery-reconciliation problem than to a general marketplace need. Supplier coverage matters—especially to Calder Group—but the interviews suggest the bigger day-to-day pain is knowing what arrived, resolving discrepancies, and matching invoices and credits. Build toward that workflow next quarter; treat a broad marketplace as an unproven solution.

Findings and evidence

1. Receiving and invoice reconciliation are recurring operational pains. — Moderate evidence Eight of the ten interview excerpts raise delivery checking, discrepancies, invoice matching, credit notes, or the paperwork around them. Examples include paying for undelivered goods, learning about short deliveries only when the invoice arrives, and re-entering clipboard checks into Larder. Several customers describe financial impact or repeated manual work. The support export also contains tickets in both “Delivery didn’t match order” and “Invoice reconciliation.”

This is a consistent signal across the interviews, but ten excerpts cannot establish how common the problem is across Larder’s 1,140 accounts or which part of the workflow is most valuable to solve first.

2. Supplier availability is a genuine need, but the ticket count overstates its breadth. — Moderate evidence for demand; weak evidence for a marketplace “Add more suppliers” is the largest ticket category: 75 of 200 tickets. But 58 of those tickets—most of the category—come from one customer, Calder Group. The remaining 17 are from other accounts, so supplier coverage is not solely a Calder concern, but ticket volume is not evidence that most customers want a marketplace. Calder’s 14 sites and stated intent to move all ordering to Larder make its request strategically important; it is still one account.

The interviews echo that distinction: the pizzeria wants more choice and better prices, and Calder explicitly wants every supplier on-platform. But another multi-site operator says finding suppliers is not the problem, and the tapas bar says paperwork is what hurts day to day.

3. A marketplace is a proposed solution, not a validated priority. — Weak evidence The evidence supports specific supplier gaps and some appetite for choice, but does not show that customers broadly want a marketplace, what marketplace model they mean, or whether it would resolve their more frequent receiving and reconciliation problems. The draft’s conclusion goes beyond what these sources can establish.

What to build next quarter

Prioritize a focused delivery-to-invoice reconciliation improvement: make it easier to record what was received, flag shortages and substitutions against the order, and carry discrepancies through to invoice matching and credit-note tracking. Test the workflow with customers who describe these pains before committing to a larger build.

In parallel, follow up with Calder and a few other customers requesting suppliers. Assess targeted supplier onboarding or integrations for the specific suppliers they need; do not assume this requires a general-purpose marketplace. Use the quarter to measure how widespread each problem is across distinct accounts and whether improved reconciliation reduces manual work and unresolved discrepancies.

Synthesis: what customers are telling us

Headline: Our biggest problem is that customers can't easily check what arrived against what they were invoiced. A supplier marketplace is a real but narrow request, concentrated in one large account. I don't recommend building it next quarter.

Sources: 10 owner and manager interviews (September) and 200 support tickets from last quarter (LT-5000 to LT-5199).

What changed from the draft: "Top category by far" holds only because of one account. "Most customers we spoke to want a marketplace" is 2 of 10, and one of those is hedged. The recommendation doesn't follow from the evidence.

Findings

1. Checking deliveries and reconciling invoices is the main pain. Evidence: strong. - 63 of 200 tickets (32%) are "delivery didn't match order" or "invoice reconciliation." The most common issues are short deliveries not shown in the app, missing credit notes, invoices including items not delivered, invoices that can't be matched to orders, and accountant exports that omit credits. - These tickets come from many different accounts, not one. - 8 of 10 interviews describe this problem. A gastropub lost about £600 in a month paying for unchecked deliveries. A hotel finance team chases credit notes weekly. A bakery is in a "my word against theirs" dispute with a supplier. A noodle bar re-types clipboard checks into the app. - Caveats: ticket categories are assigned by support staff, and 10 interviews is a small sample.

2. Supplier demand is concentrated in one account. Evidence: strong for Calder Group, weak as a base-wide signal. - "Add more suppliers" is the largest ticket category (75 tickets), but 58 come from Calder Group (14 sites). Outside Calder it is 17 tickets, fewer than delivery issues (34) or ordering issues (31). - Calder's requests repeat four named suppliers: Brakes (15 tickets), meat (15), dairy (14), and a wine merchant (14). These are four specific onboarding requests, not a general need for a marketplace. - Outside Calder, requests are vague ("any plans for more suppliers?", "would like more produce suppliers"), spread across accounts. - In interviews, 2 of 10 want more suppliers: the pizzeria and Calder. A tapas bar says it would use a marketplace "I suppose," but says the paperwork is what hurts day to day. A café group says finding suppliers "isn't the problem. Knowing what actually arrived is."

3. Calder Group is a high-value but conditional signal. Evidence: one account, one conversation. - Calder says: "If you had a marketplace, we'd move all our ordering to you." That is the strongest commercial statement in the material, but it is one customer's conditional view, and it depends on four specific suppliers. - We don't know from these materials how much ordering volume or revenue Calder represents.

4. Ordering and login tickets are routine. Evidence: moderate, low priority. - Ordering (31) and login (31) tickets are mostly specific fixes: cut-off times, duplicate orders, delivery-day changes, tablet login problems, password resets, adding users. None of these came up in interviews.

What this means for next quarter

Build: a receiving and invoice-matching workflow. This addresses the largest and most widely shared problem. - Let staff record received quantities at delivery, with shorts and substitutions flagged in the app. This covers the short-delivery tickets and "how do I record a substitution?" - Automatically match invoices to deliveries and orders, and flag differences before payment. This covers "can't match," "total differs," and "includes items not delivered." - Show credit notes against deliveries and in the accountant export. Fixing the export that omits credits could ship early as a quick win. - Measures: the 63-ticket category volume, and credit value recovered per account, which we can ask customers to report.

Don't build the marketplace next quarter. Instead: - Talk to Calder Group about their ordering volume and what they'd need to move everything to us. Check whether onboarding Brakes, their meat supplier, dairy, and the wine merchant is feasible as partnership or integration work. That is a much smaller decision than building a platform. - Add a "request a supplier" flow so demand from the wider base is captured in a structured way. Then we can see whether requests extend beyond Calder. - Triage the ordering and login tickets into the backlog as small fixes.

What would change my view

• A clear rise in supplier requests from accounts other than Calder.
• Around 20 more interviews, across account sizes and including some churned customers, where supplier access is named as the blocker.
• Evidence that Calder's ordering value justifies the integrations, or that a marketplace would win or retain several accounts of Calder's scale.

Until then, the evidence supports fixing receiving and reconciliation first, and treating the supplier question as a targeted account decision rather than a platform bet.

Synthesis: what customers need from Larder next (for the CPO)

Headline: The broadest and best-evidenced problem is that customers can't easily tell what actually arrived, and it costs them money and hours every week. Demand for "more suppliers" is real, but nearly all of it comes from one account. That account wants its own four suppliers connected, which is not the same as a marketplace. Next quarter we should build delivery check-in and discrepancy tracking, and handle Calder Group's request as a bounded onboarding project.

Finding 1: Delivery and invoice mismatches are the most widespread pain

Evidence: strong. It is consistent across both sources, comes from many accounts, and customers describe concrete costs.

• Tickets: "Delivery didn't match order" (34) and "Invoice reconciliation" (29) describe the same problem from two ends: ordered, received and invoiced don't line up. Together they account for 63 of 200 tickets (32%) from about 62 different accounts. By number of customers affected, this is our largest problem.
• Interviews: 8 of 10 describe it. Examples:
• About £600 lost in a month on undelivered items (gastropub).
• A finance team spending days every week chasing credit notes (hotel).
• Sunday nights reconciling invoices with a highlighter (bistro).
• Disputes with suppliers that can't be won without proof (bakery).
• Checking deliveries on a clipboard, then re-typing everything (noodle bar).
• Paying mismatched invoices because there's no time to check (steakhouse).

Finding 2: "Add more suppliers" is the top ticket category, but it is essentially one customer

Evidence: strong that the demand is concentrated; weak that there is broad demand for a marketplace.

- Calder Group's tickets: 75 tickets (37.5%) fall in this category, but 58 come from Calder Group alone. They repeatedly ask for the same four suppliers: - Brakes (15 tickets) - Their meat supplier (15) - Their dairy supplier (14) - Their wine merchant (14) They want suppliers they already use connected to Larder. They are not asking to discover new suppliers. - Everyone else: The remaining 17 tickets come from 17 accounts and are mostly generic ("Any plans for more suppliers?", "Would like more produce suppliers"). - Interviews: Only 2 of 10 clearly want this (the pizzeria and Calder). The tapas bar is lukewarm ("I suppose") and says paperwork is the real problem. The café group says outright that "finding suppliers isn't the problem."

The earlier claim that "most customers we spoke to want a marketplace" is not supported.

Finding 3: Calder is a real commercial opportunity of a specific kind

Evidence: moderate. This is one account's clear statement, untested.

• Calder has 14 sites and says it would move all its ordering to us if its suppliers were on the platform.
• We don't yet know how much of its ordering runs through Larder today or what the account is worth. We need that before sizing the effort.
• Their need is met by onboarding four named suppliers, not by building a marketplace.

Other signals

• Login and access (31 tickets) and ordering questions (31) look routine.
• One subset matters for the recommendation below: 10 tickets are "can't log in on tablet," and the tablet is where delivery check-in would happen.

Limits of this evidence

• Small interview sample. There are 10 interviews and we don't know how participants were chosen.
• One quarter of tickets. Ticket volume measures who contacts support, not who has the problem. Customers who silently pay wrong invoices, like the steakhouse, won't file tickets, so mismatch pain is probably under-counted.
• Data quality. Support staff assign the categories, and a few accounts show inconsistent site counts across tickets.
• No usage or revenue data yet. We can't weigh Calder against the long tail of smaller accounts.

What this means for next quarter

1. Build delivery check-in and discrepancy tracking. This is our core promise ("track deliveries and invoices") and is where the broad pain sits. Scope: - Check a delivery against the order at the door, on phone or tablet, replacing the clipboard and the re-typing. - Record shorts, substitutions and short weights, with a photo and timestamp to use as evidence in disputes. - Flag invoice lines that don't match what was received. - Raise credit notes and track them until they arrive. - Show credits in the accountant export (8 tickets ask for this). - Fix tablet login as part of the work.

Success measures: - Share of deliveries checked in. - £ of discrepancies recorded and credited. - Fewer tickets in the two mismatch categories. - Time spent on reconciliation, re-checked with these interviewees.

2. Treat Calder as an account project, not a platform bet. - Work with sales to confirm the account's value and how much of its ordering would move. - Then scope onboarding of the four requested suppliers. This is bounded work that doesn't require a marketplace.

3. Don't build a marketplace next quarter. - If we want to test demand, do it cheaply. Follow up with the 17 non-Calder accounts or run a fake-door test in the app. - Revisit with that data.