Adagio Acres: “HandiFox was the perfect fit!”

Here at HandiFox we get to meet a lot of interesting people and hear amazing business stories. Amy Nikkel, a co-founder of Adagio Acres, a family-owned farm of 80 acres in Winnipeg (Manitoba Province, Canada), has agreed to tell us the story of their small yet truly unique in many senses business. Adagio Acres produces rolled oat flakes and steel-cut oats supplying the area bakeries and restaurants. With the health of their business in mind, the Nikkels decided that it was essential to have an inventory management system in place and that is when HandiFox stepped in to take care of this problem.

How was your company founded?

Amy: My husband and I started farming when our daughter was born.  We were drawn to growing food and experimenting with sustainable production methods, both as a business venture and as a lifestyle choice for our family.

How many employees do you have?

Amy: We grow organic grains on our own farm, then mill and package them right on our farm, and deliver products to about 70 retail locations and restaurants, mostly within the province.  We are as small as small businesses get, with just ourselves and one employee.

What challenges and objectives led you to look for a solution?  

Amy: Although we are a small business, really quite insignificant in the scale of industrial food production, we still needed a good traceability system in place to ensure that we could trace inventory from our mill, while in-transit, and after being delivered to customers.  We were using excel spreadsheets and sticky notes to keep track of which customers were getting product from each lot number, and this was getting cumbersome and difficult to keep track of.  But when we looked at other platforms that offered inventory management and integration with QuickBooks, there was no way we could justify the expense.  Handifox was the perfect fit!

What was most important to you when evaluating your options?

Amy: We were very impressed with the simplicity of integration with QuickBooks and the user-friendly mobile app, the reasonable cost, and some flexibility to use the product to suit our individual needs.  

How long did it take to get up and running?

Amy: We were up and running with HandiFox within a few days, and the questions that did come up with syncing the program with QuickBooks were quickly addressed by the technical support team.

Who uses the product? Is there a particular aspect of the product that you rely on most?

Amy: We only have HandiFox loaded onto one mobile device, and it is just used by the owner (myself).  We use it to generate invoices on the road, and we use the barcode scanning feature on the memo field to associate barcoded lot numbers with each invoice.  These lot numbers are then searchable within QuickBook reports, which allows us to generate traceability reports for our food safety program and conduct mock recalls effortlessly.

How is the product helping you save time and increase productivity?

Amy: Traceability is very important for us, and this has been invaluable.  When we have had third-party audits on our food safety program they have all been very impressed with the simplicity and functionality of using Handifox to track inventory and lot codes.

Also, see Amy’s review of HandiFox at capterra.com.