How Heritage Confections Doubled Revenue and Increased Margins by 12%

The situation

In 2022, my sister and I purchased Heritage Confections — a local popcorn business in Alberta that had been operating for nearly 20 years and was at risk of closing. We were excited. We were also completely new to food manufacturing.

The previous owner had run the entire business out of a small hand-written date book: orders for the week, customer notes, whatever he needed to remember. When we took over, that book disappeared. Our first month was reactive, stressful, and full of gaps.

I had nearly 20 years of experience in web development, systems design, and marketing automation — but I’d never managed inventory, production schedules, or wholesale grocery accounts. What I did know was that without systems, nothing scales. So we got to work.

What we built

We started with the basics: a real inventory system. We catalogued every ingredient, mapped out what went into each product, set reorder points, and made sure we could answer “what do we have right now?” without hunting through a spreadsheet.

From there, we built out our customer records. We had over 150 accounts — grocery stores, specialty shops, fundraiser organizations — but no centralized record of who was active, who hadn’t ordered in months, or what their buying patterns looked like. We fixed that.

The follow-up automation came next, and it changed everything. Grocery stores need consistent reminders to stay engaged — they’re busy, they’re managing hundreds of vendors, and if you’re not in front of them, someone else is. We built automated re-engagement sequences so that no account went quiet without us knowing. That alone was a major driver of our revenue growth in year two.

Then we dug into margins. This is where we found the most painful discovery: we were offering free shipping to some stores to get a foot in the door, and on those orders we were making less than 4% profit margin. Our normal margin is 45–52%. One careful look at the numbers changed our entire approach to pricing and deal-making.

The results

In year three, Heritage Confections doubled its revenue from the year before. Profit margins increased by 12%. We grew to over 60 active retail locations — all managed by a two-person team.

In year four, we grew an additional 25%. Year five is tracking to grow another 25% on top of that.

None of this happened because we worked harder. It happened because we could see what was going on, act on the right information, and stop doing things that were quietly costing us.

Why we built Caska

The tools we needed didn’t exist — at least not for a business our size. Generic ERP platforms were built for industrial manufacturers with dedicated IT staff. Inventory tools designed for retail didn’t understand how a food manufacturer actually works. We cobbled together what we could and built the rest ourselves.

Caska is the platform we built for Heritage Confections - made available for every food manufacturer who’s navigating the same challenges. It’s not built by people who studied food businesses from the outside — it’s built by people who run one.