Tate’s Bake Shop

About Tate’s Bake Shop
The “Bake Shop Way” is the Tate’s Bake Shop commitment to uncompromised quality. This commitment shows in the long lines outside of their Southampton, NY, store. Voted the Best Bakery in the Hamptons for years, today’s loyal customers can find Tate’s Bake Shop cookies in retail grocery chains across the country. Founded in 1980 by Kathleen King, who started selling cookies out of her parents’ Long Island farmstead when she was 12, Tate’s Bake Shop is now known not only for those amazing crisp and buttery chocolate chip cookies, but also for their award-winning line of gluten-free baked goods. Today, Tate’s produces over 1 million cookies per day!

Implementing Infor CloudSuite Industrial
When Tate’s outgrew their ERP in 2016, they partnered with Decision Resources to implement a manufacturing platform that could handle their industry requirements, their growing volume, and integrate with their online store. They needed flexibility in a cloud-based system as well as the ability to manage all aspects of their operations on one single platform. Infor CloudSuite Industrial for Food & Beverage Manufacturing gave them this flexibility, functionality, and more. The new ERP granted them the tools they needed to focus on growing their business.

Implementing Infor CloudSuite Industrial meant a new level of discipline for the team at Tate’s. Ensuring that all team members are properly trained, processes and workflows are set up properly, and new data procedures are in place was critical for success and adoption. All of those things needed to happen company wide to lay a solid foundation for future growth and scalability.

Tom Pawluk, Tate’s CFO, said, “…the new system came with a big learning curve. CloudSuite Process set us up for long term success. I would advice any companies going through new system implementations of this scope to ensure that mid-level managers through the executive team are committed to the process.”

Important Project Components
With 24 rack ovens, 2 band ovens, and a production yield of over 1 million cookies per day, Tate’s not only required manufacturing excellence, advanced traceability, warehouse management, and recall compliance, but also flexible QA processes, a reliable CRM and an EDI integration.

The team at Decision Resources was critical in ensuring that CloudSuite Industrial was fully integrated with Tate’s supply chain through an EDI system and with their eCommerce system. Prior to the ERP implementation, orders coming in via EDI and through the online web store had to be manually re-keyed into the production system. 91% of Tate’s revenue comes from the commercial market, through wholesalers, and direct-to-retail chains, and many of those organizations require or prefer to send information via EDI.

“Prior to CloudSuite, we were limited in our ability to use EDI with our customers. Now, we are trying to get as many customers as possible to place orders via EDI because it is completely integrated with our system.”

Tom Pawluk
CFO

Decision Resources already had a built-in integration to the SPS Commerce EDI platform, which Tate’s is using, but the integration to their Magento e-commerce system needed to be customized to fit the demands of their business. The Decision Resources’ DataBridge was used by their team to build the integration between Magento and Infor CloudSuite Industrial. Now, online orders move seamlessly into the ERP, creating production requirements and other appropriate transactions.

Tate’s system was fully configured from lead-to-cash to automate, streamline, and increase efficiency across all operational areas of the business. This allowed them to make faster, data-driven decisions that yield ROI and increase profitability. Watch to learn more!

A Look Forward
Over the past few years, Tate’s Bake Shop has experienced unprecedented growth, quadrupling their annual sales over 5 years, expanding their locations, increasing their number of retail partners, and increasing their team size to accommodate their increased volume. As part of their growth strategy, Tate’s was acquired by Mondelez International Inc in 2018. This strategic acquisition by Mondelez allows Tate’s to continue to reach new customers all over the world while receiving additional resources to accelerate growth and meet intense production demands.

As part of this acquisition, Tate’s Bake Shop is actively migrating their ERP and tech stack to match that of their new parent company. At Decision Resources, our passion is fueling growth for American Manufacturers and nothing makes us happier than to see our clients reach these incredible milestones.

We are proud to have partnered with and supported Tate’s expansion over the years with the right technology, smart manufacturing processes, business intelligence tools, and proper planning, logistics, and fulfillment software. Tate’s is a prime example of how the right products and the right team accompanied by the right ERP can achieve any growth target placed in front of them.

Our team has remained a collaborative partner throughout this merger and could not be more proud of the growth trajectory of Tate’s Bake Shop. On behalf of the entire Decision Resources team, we wish Tate’s Bake Shop continued success and hope to see their delicious cookies in every US grocery store in the years to come.

If you haven’t tried their cookies yet, you should!

Tate’s Bake Shop can be found online at www.tatesbakeshop.com