Extract discovery insights

Synthesis for the CPO: what to build next quarter

Headline: The evidence doesn't support a marketplace. It points to the gap between what we order, what arrives and what we're invoiced. I recommend building delivery checking and reconciliation next quarter.

Corrections to the earlier draft

• "Add more suppliers is our top category by far" is an artefact of one account. Of 200 tickets, 75 are in that category, and 58 of those come from Calder Group, which repeats four requests: Brakes, a meat supplier, a dairy supplier and a wine merchant. The other 17 come from 17 different accounts. Without Calder, it is our smallest category (17 of 142 tickets, 12%).
• "Most customers want a marketplace" is wrong. Only 2 of 10 interviewees asked for more suppliers (Calder and the pizzeria). The tapas bar was lukewarm ("I suppose") and went straight to paperwork. The café group said finding suppliers "isn't the problem."

Findings and strength of evidence

1. Customers can't easily verify what was delivered against what they ordered and were invoiced for. Strength: strong. - Interviews: 7 of 10 describe this unprompted, and an eighth (tapas bar) says "paperwork" without detail. Examples are short fish orders found a week later, a chef signing notes unchecked (~£600 in a month), finance chasing credit notes, "my word against theirs," clipboard re-typing, and invoices that never match. - Tickets: "Delivery didn't match order" (34) and "Invoice reconciliation" (29) total 63 tickets, 44% of non-Calder volume, from about 62 distinct accounts. The ticket summaries include "short delivery not shown in app," "invoice includes items not delivered," "credit note missing" and "export doesn't show credits." - Interviews and tickets are independent sources and agree. The combined grouping is my judgement, but delivery tickets alone (34) are still twice the non-Calder supplier requests.

2. Generic demand for more suppliers is small and vague. Strength: moderate. - The 17 non-Calder tickets are "any plans for more suppliers?" (8) and "more produce suppliers" (9). They show mild interest, not a pain point. One interviewee (the pizzeria) wants more choice and better prices.

3. Calder Group has a real, specific need. Strength: strong for Calder, weak as a market signal. - Calder is one account with 14 sites, which says it would move all ordering to us with a marketplace. This is a stated, conditional intent. Its tickets name four suppliers, which is an onboarding request, not evidence for a marketplace. We don't yet know Calder's revenue or how many similar multi-site groups we have.

4. Smaller issues: ordering, logins and tablets. Strength: moderate, low priority. - Ordering (31 tickets) and login/access (31 tickets) are mostly routine. "Can't log in on tablet" matters because delivery checking will likely happen on a tablet at the back door.

What this means for next quarter

Build: a receiving and reconciliation flow. - Staff record what actually arrived at the door: shorts, substitutions and weights. - The app flags mismatches against the order and the invoice. - It produces a timestamped record the owner can send to the supplier as a credit-note claim. - Credits flow into the accountant export.

This addresses the main complaints: finding out a week late, the "my word against theirs" disputes, and double entry. It also helps the people who file tickets about short deliveries and missing credit notes.

Don't build: a marketplace. It's a large investment backed by one account and a few vague requests.

Handle Calder separately. Onboard their four named suppliers through our existing process if feasible. Then ask Calder whether that satisfies their "move everything to you" condition, and get their revenue.

Fix before building: tablet login reliability, since the new flow depends on it.

Caveats

• The sample is 10 interviews from September, and I don't know how they were recruited. Eight of ten raising the same pain is encouraging but not a measured prevalence.
• Tickets show what people contact support about, not everything that hurts. Customers with delivery problems may just pay the invoice, as the steakhouse does.
• Ticket data is one quarter, and the `account_sites` values are inconsistent for a few accounts (for example 1418 and 1625), so I haven't segmented by size.
• The £600 loss is one anecdote. Before committing scope, we should size the cost of short deliveries and unclaimed credits across a sample of accounts.

What would change my view

If we find a meaningful segment of multi-site groups like Calder, with material revenue that is blocked on supplier coverage, supplier breadth becomes a segment-specific bet. It would then be worth testing through targeted onboarding before any full marketplace.

To: Chief Product Officer From: Product Manager, Ordering Subject: Q4 Product Strategy Synthesis: Debunking the Marketplace Hypothesis

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Executive Summary

The recommendation in the draft synthesis—to build a supplier marketplace—is based on a misinterpretation of support data and interview signals.

A closer analysis reveals that demand for a discovery marketplace is weak. Instead, the data reveals a critical, systemic gap in our core product: delivery verification and invoice reconciliation. Restaurants are losing hundreds of pounds monthly and spending hours manually reconciling short deliveries, substitutions, and incorrect invoices.

Next quarter, we should not build a marketplace. We should build an end-to-end delivery check-in and automated reconciliation workflow.

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Key Findings & Evidence Strength

#### 1. Demand for a "Supplier Marketplace" is an artifact of a single customer * Finding: Customers are not asking for supplier discovery. What looks like our highest-volume ticket category is heavily skewed by one account, and the few requests for "more suppliers" reflect a desire to bring existing suppliers onto Larder, not discover new ones. * Evidence Strength: High (Quantitative & Qualitative) * Ticket Skew: "Add more suppliers" represents 75 of 200 tickets (37.5%). However, 58 of those 75 tickets (77%) were submitted by a single customer: Calder Group (14 sites), repeatedly requesting onboarding for four specific existing vendors (Brakes, meat, dairy, wine). * Only 17 other accounts (out of 1,140 total accounts, ~1.5%) submitted requests in this category. * Interviews: Only 1 of 10 respondents (Pizzeria) actively asked for a marketplace for choice/pricing. In contrast, multi-site operators explicitly stated: "Finding suppliers isn't the problem. Knowing what actually arrived is" (Café group) and "I'd use a marketplace if it existed, I suppose. But day to day, what kills me is the paperwork" (Tapas bar). Even Calder Group’s interview makes clear their goal is centralizing their existing supply base onto one system.

#### 2. The critical operational pain is post-order delivery check-in and invoice reconciliation * Finding: Restaurants face daily operational chaos and margin loss between order placement and invoice payment. Deliveries arrive short or substituted, chefs lack a frictionless way to record discrepancies, and finance teams waste days chasing credit notes. * Evidence Strength: Very High (Triangulated across support & interviews) * Support Tickets: Combined, Delivery didn't match order (34 tickets) and Invoice reconciliation (29 tickets) account for 63 tickets across ~60 distinct accounts—nearly 4x the unique account breadth of general supplier requests. Core sub-issues include: "Invoice includes items not delivered", "Short delivery not shown in app", "Credit note missing", and "Export for accountant doesn't show credits". * Interviews: 8 out of 10 interviewees cited this as their primary operational bottleneck. The impact is acute and financial: * Direct losses: Gastropub lost ~£600 last month paying for unchecked deliveries; Steakhouse pays unmatched invoices due to lack of time. * Wasted admin: Hotel finance team spends days chasing credit notes; Bistro owner spends Sundays matching notes with highlighters; Noodle bar re-types paper notes into the app. * Dispute friction: Bakery notes supplier disputes are "my word against theirs."

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What This Means for Next Quarter

Building a two-sided marketplace would require massive operational lift (supplier acquisition, vetting, liquidity) while failing to solve the core retention and efficiency problems of our existing 1,140 accounts.

Instead, we must complete our core product loop: Order $\rightarrow$ Receive $\rightarrow$ Reconcile.

#### Next Quarter Roadmap Priorities

1. P0: Mobile/Tablet Delivery Check-In Flow * Problem solved: Staff currently check goods on paper clipboards or sign blindly. * Feature: Fast, touch-friendly check-in workflow at the delivery door. Staff can mark line items as accepted, short, rejected, or substituted, with photo capture for damaged goods.

2. P1: Discrepancy & Credit Note Tracking * Problem solved: Finance teams manually chase suppliers for credit notes; owners lack proof of short deliveries. * Feature: Automatically generate and email a discrepancy report to the supplier upon delivery check-in, creating an audit trail and tracking outstanding credit notes until resolved.

3. P2: 3-Way Invoice Reconciliation & Accounting Export * Problem solved: Invoices don't match orders, and exports fail to reflect credits. * Feature: Match PO $\rightarrow$ Delivery Note $\rightarrow$ Final Invoice. Highlight variances automatically and update accounting exports to include verified credits.

4. Fast-Follow / Targeted: Self-Serve Supplier Onboarding Portal * Problem solved: Satisfies Calder Group and similar multi-site accounts wanting their off-platform suppliers integrated. * Feature: A lightweight "Invite Supplier" flow where restaurants send an onboarding link directly to their existing vendors to set up a digital catalog.

Next-quarter synthesis: prioritise delivery-to-invoice accuracy, not a marketplace

Recommendation: Build and validate a focused workflow for recording what arrived, flagging discrepancies and resolving invoice/credit issues. Continue targeted supplier onboarding, but do not commit next quarter to a broad marketplace. The evidence supports operational accuracy more broadly than supplier discovery.

Main findings and evidence strength

1. Supplier requests lead ticket volume—but are heavily concentrated in one account

The export contains 200 tickets:

Account counts are deduplicated within categories; they should not be summed across categories.

Calder Group generated 58 of the 75 supplier tickets (77%), repeatedly requesting onboarding for four named suppliers or supplier types. The other 17 supplier tickets came from 17 accounts.

Evidence strength: Strong evidence of a concentrated supplier-coverage need; weak evidence that a marketplace is the right solution. Ticket volume measures support demand, not independent customer votes. Repeated requests may indicate an important unresolved problem, but not broad market demand.

Calder’s 14 sites and stated willingness to move all ordering to Larder warrant commercial follow-up. However, this is a conditional intention—not a commitment—and we have no revenue or order-volume evidence to size the opportunity. Requests to add existing suppliers must also be distinguished from discovering new ones.

2. Delivery and invoice problems affect a broader set of accounts

Together, delivery discrepancies and invoice reconciliation account for 63 tickets from 62 distinct accounts, compared with supplier requests from 18 accounts.

The interviews reinforce this pattern. Eight of ten excerpts describe delivery, reconciliation or paperwork pain, although the tapas bar’s comment is less specific. Examples include:

• Discovering a short delivery only when the invoice arrives.
• Paying for undelivered goods; one gastropub reported approximately £600 in one month.
• Chasing credit notes weekly.
• Having no shared evidence when suppliers dispute shortages.
• Recording deliveries on paper, then re-entering them in Larder.

The café group explicitly says finding suppliers is not the problem; knowing what arrived is.

Evidence strength: Strong convergence across these two sources that this is a meaningful problem spanning multiple restaurant formats. Evidence for its prevalence across all 1,140 accounts, typical financial impact or the best solution remains limited. The £600 figure is one customer’s report, not an estimate we can extrapolate.

3. Marketplace interest exists, but “most customers want one” is unsupported

The pizzeria strongly wants more choice and better prices. Calder explicitly mentions a marketplace, but frames its need as getting every supplier onto the platform. The tapas bar expresses tentative interest, then prioritises paperwork.

Evidence strength: Directional evidence for supplier expansion, but weak evidence for broad marketplace demand. Only Calder explicitly advocates a marketplace; the pizzeria’s desired outcome could potentially be served in other ways. These excerpts do not establish expected adoption, switching behaviour or willingness to pay.

What we should build next quarter

Prioritise a narrow delivery-to-invoice pilot, rather than attempting full reconciliation automation immediately:

1. Capture actual receipt against an order: quantities received, shortages and substitutions, without duplicate entry.
2. Carry discrepancies forward: make them visible when checking invoices rather than leaving users to reconstruct events.
3. Track resolution: preserve a discrepancy record and show outstanding supplier responses or credits.

Start with observing receiving and invoice-checking in a varied set of independent restaurants. In particular, test whether busy staff will actually record discrepancies: the unchecked delivery-note example suggests software alone may not solve the problem.

Measure receiving-workflow adoption, duplicate entry, reconciliation time, discrepancies identified before payment and time to resolve credits. Establish baselines before setting numerical success targets; use pilot results to decide how far to expand.

Keep supplier coverage as a separate, bounded workstream. Clarify Calder’s required suppliers, onboarding feasibility and commercial commitment. Test targeted onboarding before assuming we need marketplace discovery, comparison and transaction capabilities.

Confidence and limits: This is a prioritisation recommendation, not a proven business case. Ten interview excerpts and self-selected support tickets cannot establish population prevalence. Some accounts also have inconsistent site counts in the export, so site-weighted conclusions would be unreliable. Validate the proposed workflow and its value before a broad rollout.