Extract discovery insights

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.

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.