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2024 was our first full year in market with our Sourcing Network platform, which helps restaurants and grocers buy direct-from-farm at scale. We onboarded several new buyers to our platform this year that represent a combined 160+ locations, and expect that number to more than double in 2025! It was a year full of innovation and as we head into the new year, we’re filled with gratitude and excitement for what’s yet to come.
Before we reveal our action-packed 2025 roadmap, we wanted to highlight the key innovations we released this year:
At the beginning of the year we launched the Local Line Sourcing Network, a local food procurement platform designed for restaurants and grocers to streamline the discovery, ordering, and payment processes for their local suppliers. This new extension of Local Line allows wholesale buyers to log into their account and order from a fully customized catalogue of their local suppliers, all updated in real time ensuring accuracy in both pricing and availability. Buyers who once worked off of notebooks, spreadsheets, phone calls and emails, now have a centralized platform, greatly reducing time spent managing orders.
The acquisition of Forager in the summer of 2023 had our team working diligently to develop a platform that felt familiar to Forager users while introducing multiple enhancements and robust, feature-rich functionality. In early spring of 2024, less than a year after the acquisition, we successfully migrated Forager’s entire supplier and buyer base. This seamless transition allowed Forager’s customers to continue operating without interruption, while taking advantage of all the new features Local Line has to offer.
Shortly after the Forager migration, we released our Supplier Discovery feature. The process of finding new suppliers is time consuming and often overwhelming. Supplier Discovery solves that by putting Local Line’s network of thousands of suppliers and over 200,000 local products at each buyer's fingertips. Filters such as Distance and Certifications allow buyers to easily narrow down their search. An interactive map allows buyers to zoom in on their desired location and view all suppliers within that area. This can also be very useful when crops are affected by weather or other natural circumstances and the buyer needs to find a backup farm in a hurry. With these tools, buyers can quickly and confidently connect with the right suppliers, ensuring their operations run smoothly even in challenging situations.
By the end of spring we were ready to release our first point of sale integration with ECRS. ECRS: Point of Sale is a system used by grocery stores to manage their checkout, inventory, and replenishment processes. Our team worked closely with The Portland Food Co-op and the engineers at ECRS to create a system that allows the two softwares to communicate. Synchronizing these two technologies removes the often lengthy, manual entry of invoices. It also automatically updates inventory and pricing, saving between 10-20 hours of office time per week. Thanks for this integration, buyers at Portland Food Co-op are now placing orders with their local suppliers through the same system they use to order from their larger distributors!
We rolled out our “Product Priority” feature just in time for summer, which allows buyers to rank their top three suppliers, in order, for each product. This feature is particularly helpful if a main buyer is away and another team member needs to know which suppliers to order from, but it also helpful when you have a big order and need to spread it across multiple suppliers. Not to mention, it also makes it easier for new employees to better acquaint themselves with what is on the shelves.
Without Local Line, up to the minute tracking of which orders have been received and which are incoming was more or less a pipe dream. But we solved this issue by introducing comprehensive receiving functionality. When an order is delivered, buyers can modify the original order to match what’s been delivered. After that, they mark the order as “Received”. Once they do, finance teams are automatically notified that an order has been finalized and received, and the Local Line platform marks it ready for payment. These little workflow enhancements make a huge difference in day to day efficiency.
In the fall, we released our highly anticipated “Approved Products” table, which provides buyers with a singular ordering interface for every approved product from all of their suppliers. Of course, buyers can specify which products are approved for which locations, and can even manage product approvals by department at the location level. We found that the Approved Products table reduced buyer ordering times by 6-8 hours per week by allowing the buyer to walk the aisles, add every product to their cart, and do a bulk checkout for multiple suppliers at once.
To cap off the year, we recently released Recurring Orders, which allows the buyer to re-order a past order with the click of a button. This comes in handy when a buyer has a standing order that doesn’t alter from week to week. Rather than going through the process of reentering the order, users can simply click “reorder”, make any necessary changes, input your delivery date, and check out.
As we turn the page to 2025, in the coming few months you can expect new dashboard enhancements including an “Upcoming Deliveries” widget that provides a clear picture of what deliveries are incoming, allowing you to arrange necessary storage space ahead of time. We’re also going to be launching new user tiers within locations so that users can be assigned to a collection of stores or departments within stores. Lastly, you’ll start to notice enhanced traceability features including lot codes and order label improvements to help you prepare for the upcoming FSMA204 requirements.
From all of us at Local Line, thank you for a great 2024! We can’t wait to accomplish even more in 2025.
