How 50Hertz Sichuan Pepper Boosted Wholesale Revenue by Streamlining Vendor Invoicing

‍Company

50Hertz is a modern spice brand designed around Sichuan pepper and its novel tingly numbing sensation. Their current offerings are red and green Sichuan pepper oils. The DC-based company launched in 2020 and has scaled exponentially with a mission to champion Sichuan pepper as the next addition to global cuisine. 

Founders

Yao Zhao

Industry

Food & Beverage‍

The Problem

50Hertz sells through two core channels: DTC and brick-and-mortar outlets, primarily comprising restaurants and groceries. While the brand has seen enormous revenue growth through its online channel in recent months, fueled by multiple features in The New York Times, the 50Hertz team plans to rapidly scale its brick-and-mortar revenue stream in the coming year. In addition, the brand plans to expand into new product formulations and adjacent markets. 

However, 50Hertz ran into a key issue as it began to expand its wholesale channel: its B2B payment workflow needed improvement. As the company grew to double-digit brick-and-mortar vendors across the country, invoicing and reconciliation became increasingly difficult to manage. 

While the brand first attempted to solve this problem via Quickbooks, its core integration failed to automatically translate orders to invoices in a streamlined manner.

Critically, the team wanted to create a best-in-class experience for its wholesale vendors across the board, offering upgraded features around order confirmation, invoicing payment options, and up-to-date tracking numbers for ongoing shipments from 50Hertz.

The Solution

The Streamlined team worked closely with 50Hertz to streamline invoice payment systems, directly integrating with the brand’s Shopify store to identify and codify incoming orders based on payment status. 

Leveraging the platform, the team at 50Hertz was able to quickly translate transactions into invoices without the manual overhead.

Streamlined also integrated a feature set to automate reminders for overdue invoices, yielding a more comprehensive system for the full life cycle of vendor payment processes.

The Results

By extracting order details and automatically creating vendor invoices, 50Hertz was able to streamline its tagging system and save valuable energy, time, and attention. 

With a more professional and customized approach to vendor invoice management, 50Hertz tangibly upgraded its core value proposition to vendors. More importantly, the brand professionalized its core offering early on in its market expansion lifecycle.