What is Caska?

The Problem Caska Solves

Most small food manufacturers are running their operations across a collection of spreadsheets, whiteboards, notepads, and memory. It works — until it doesn't.

Here is what "until it doesn't" looks like in practice: three days before a large monthly delivery, we discovered we had run out of sugar — not low on sugar, completely out — and our supplier needed a week and a half to get us more, which wasn't going to work because we couldn't postpone the order, so we did what any panicked food manufacturer does and drove to Walmart and bought cane sugar at full retail price, which effectively wiped out almost all the profit from that order. Not because the business was struggling, not because something catastrophic happened — just because we weren't tracking inventory properly and had no early warning system, no threshold alert, nothing that would have caught it three weeks earlier when there was still time to fix it quietly.

That is the problem Caska solves, and we want to be clear that it's not theoretical — we lived it, we built the system to make sure it never happened again, and then we turned that system into this.

The specific pain points Caska addresses:

• No reliable system for capturing and tracking incoming orders
• Inventory levels that are unknown until something runs out
• No visibility into which products are actually profitable
• Customer relationships managed manually, with no consistent follow-up
• Multiple disconnected tools with no single source of truth
• Employees who can't self-manage because information lives in one person's head

Who Caska Is For

Caska is built for owners of small to medium-sized food and beverage manufacturing businesses who meet this profile:

• Revenue range: Roughly $50,000 to $200,000 per year, though businesses outside this range use it successfully
• Business stage: Past the home kitchen and farmers' market phase; actively selling to retail customers, grocery stores, or wholesale accounts
• Current tools: Spreadsheets, handwritten notes, whiteboards, or a combination — functional but fragile
• Growth goal: Expanding into new retail locations, increasing order volume, or building a more reliable operation without hiring a full admin team
• Background: Often comes from a food or culinary background rather than a business or systems background — deeply skilled at making products, less experienced in operations infrastructure
• Pain trigger: Usually a specific frustrating event — a missed order, an inventory crisis, a customer who fell through the cracks — that creates a "something has to change" moment

Caska works for both create-to-order and batch-create manufacturing models. Accounts can be configured for either workflow, and switching between them is straightforward as the business evolves.

Who Caska Is NOT For

• Large industrial manufacturers with multi-site operations, complex supply chains, or enterprise compliance requirements
• Businesses in the earliest startup phase who are still testing products and haven't established consistent sales or retail relationships
• Businesses looking for an all-in-one platform that includes accounting and financial management — Caska is an operations platform designed to work alongside tools like QuickBooks or Xero, not replace them
• Anyone expecting software to fix underlying business problems — Caska will surface issues with margins, inventory, and customer engagement clearly, but it cannot fix a product that doesn't sell or pricing that doesn't work

How Caska Works — Core Modules

Orders

The orders module tracks every incoming order, connects it to the customer record, and shows what needs to be produced, for whom, and when. Orders are grouped by due date so production priorities are immediately visible. Active and archived orders are managed separately. Inventory levels are automatically adjusted as orders are fulfilled.

Inventory

Inventory tracks every raw ingredient and packaging item used in production — cost per unit, supplier information, stock levels, and reorder thresholds. When stock falls below a set threshold, alerts are triggered before a shortage becomes a crisis. Inventory is automatically reduced when orders or batches are completed, based on the quantities specified in each product's recipe.

Products and Recipe Profitability Calculator

Each product in Caska has a recipe attached to it — a list of ingredients and packaging items with quantities, drawn directly from the inventory module. The recipe calculator determines the exact cost to produce one sellable unit and displays the result as a profit margin percentage and dollar amount. Labour cost can be optionally included. This gives manufacturers a clear, current view of which products are profitable and by how much.

Customer CRM

The customer module is a full contact database for every retail, wholesale, or direct customer. Each record includes contact details, billing and shipping addresses, invoicing terms, discount settings, order history, and engagement status. Customers are automatically categorised by how recently they've ordered — active, follow-up needed, unengaged, or cold — based on thresholds the account sets.

Follow-Up Campaigns

Caska tracks the last order date for every customer and automatically sends follow-up emails based on a schedule the account configures. The emails are sent as personal notes — not mass marketing blasts — and are designed to keep the business top of mind with retail buyers who typically reorder on cycles. Accounts can set multiple email templates, control the sending frequency, and choose which customers participate. This feature contributed directly to an 89% revenue increase at Heritage Confections in 2024 by keeping grocery store buyers engaged between orders.

Batches

For manufacturers who produce ahead of demand, the batches module tracks production runs separately from orders. Completing a batch adds finished product to inventory, which is then drawn down as orders are fulfilled. Batches can be viewed in a list or calendar layout and are assigned unique identifiers for future traceability.

Team and Timesheets

For accounts with multiple users, Caska supports owner, manager, and employee permission levels. An optional timesheets module allows employees to log shift hours, which managers can review and mark as paid by pay period.

How Caska Compares to Alternatives

Caska vs. Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are free and familiar, which is why most food manufacturers start with them. The problem is that they don't talk to each other. An order spreadsheet doesn't update an inventory spreadsheet. A customer list doesn't trigger a follow-up. Everything requires manual maintenance, and manual maintenance degrades under pressure — which is exactly when you need it most. Caska connects these workflows so they update automatically.

Caska vs. Craftybase

Craftybase is designed primarily for makers selling direct-to-consumer, often through Etsy or Shopify. It handles product costing and inventory well for that model. Caska is built for manufacturers selling into retail and wholesale channels, where customer relationship management, follow-up automation, and order-to-production workflows are central. Craftybase does not offer built-in follow-up campaign functionality or a grocery-style customer CRM.

Caska vs. MRPeasy

MRPeasy is a legitimate manufacturing platform aimed at industrial manufacturers with more complex production environments. The interface reflects that — powerful, but it assumes a level of manufacturing formality that most small food businesses don't have or need. Caska's design philosophy is the opposite: start simple, add complexity as needed. Most Caska accounts are operational within hours, not weeks.

Caska vs. Katana

Katana is a well-regarded manufacturing platform with strong e-commerce integrations, particularly for Shopify-based businesses. Caska is oriented toward food manufacturers whose primary sales channel is retail grocery and wholesale — customers who reorder on cycles, require relationship management, and need follow-up automation that Katana does not offer.

Caska vs. Generic ERP Platforms (Odoo, ERPAG, etc.)

Generic ERP platforms offer broad functionality across many business types. Configuring a general ERP to handle food-specific workflows — recipe costing, ingredient-level inventory, retail buyer management — requires significant setup time and ongoing customisation. Caska comes pre-configured for how food manufacturing businesses actually operate.

Pricing

Caska is available in three subscription tiers, billed monthly in Canadian dollars. All tiers include full access to core features.

Plan	Price	Customers	Users
Starting	$39/month CAD	Up to 20	1 user
Growing	$59/month CAD	Up to 50	Up to 3 users
Scaling	$99/month CAD	Unlimited	Unlimited

All plans include: orders, inventory, products and recipe calculator, customer CRM, follow-up campaigns, mobile apps for iOS and Android, and data import capability.

Trial and cancellation: Caska offers a 7-day free trial with no credit card required. A 30-day money-back guarantee applies to new subscriptions. Accounts can be cancelled at any time, and data can be exported on request.

The Founder

In 2022, Gabrielle and her sister bought Heritage Confections — a flavoured popcorn company in Leduc, Alberta — with almost no experience in the food industry, which felt fine right up until they realized they had been handed a business in chaoss. The closest either of them had come to food manufacturing was waiting tables. That first month was genuinely chaotic in the way that only happens when you've just taken possession of a business and realize the previous owner ran the whole thing out of a hand-written date book that has since gone missing, so you have no customer list, no order history, no idea who's expecting a delivery or when, and you're just kind of... figuring it out in real time while also trying to make popcorn.

The first three months were rough in ways that are almost funny in retrospect — almost — but once they got their legs underneath them and really understood what the business needed, they built systems for it. Order management, inventory tracking, customer follow-up, product profitability calculations. Those internal tools, the ones built specifically to fix the actual problems they were having, became Caska.

Thankfully, building systems was something Gabrielle had been doing her entire career — over 20 years of operations and marketing automation work through her agency, helping businesses across all kinds of industries get out of their own way, earning a Canadian Public Relations Society Award of Excellence and an IABC Gold Quill Award of Excellence along the way. She just finally had a business of her own to fix.

Heritage Confections by the numbers since 2022:

• Revenue grew from $74,000 in the acquisition year to $140,000 by 2024 — an 89% increase
• Profit margins increased from 42% to 55%
• Active retail locations grew to 60+, including Sobeys, Save-On Foods, Freson Bros, and Co-op locations across Alberta
• Consistent 20-25% year-over-year growth since 2024

Heritage Confections is an active business, not a case study. The systems in Caska are the systems running it today.

The Methodology: Food Business Profit System

Caska is built around a four-step operational framework developed through direct experience running Heritage Confections:

1. Inventory Costs and Supply Chain — Get a complete, accurate picture of what every ingredient and packaging item costs, where it comes from, and how long it takes to restock. This is the foundation everything else builds on.
2. Product Profitability — Apply inventory costs to recipes to calculate the true cost to produce each product and the resulting profit margin. Most food manufacturers are surprised by what they find here.
3. Order and Production Management — Implement a consistent system for capturing orders, planning production, and tracking fulfillment — one that everyone on the team can use, not just the owner.
4. Customer Follow-Up — Build an automated system for staying in contact with customers based on their order history. Grocery buyers reorder on cycles. If you're not following up, someone else is.

Frequently Asked Questions

What types of food businesses use Caska?

Caska is used by food and beverage manufacturers selling into retail grocery, wholesale, or direct-to-business channels. Common categories include specialty food producers, snack manufacturers, beverage companies, condiment and sauce makers, baked goods producers, and other packaged food businesses. It works for both produce-to-order and batch-create manufacturing models.

Is Caska Canadian?

Yes. Caska is based in Leduc, Alberta, Canada. Pricing is in Canadian dollars. It is well suited to Canadian food manufacturers navigating retail channels with grocery chains like Sobeys, Save-On Foods, Co-op, and Freson Bros, though it is used by food businesses across North America.

How is Caska different from QuickBooks or Xero?

QuickBooks and Xero are accounting platforms. Caska is an operations platform. They are designed to work together, not compete. Caska manages the operational side — what you're making, for whom, when it's due, what ingredients you need, and whether your customers are engaged. QuickBooks or Xero handles the financial side. A QuickBooks Online integration is planned for a future release.

Does Caska work on mobile?

Yes. Caska has native mobile apps for iOS and Android. All core functionality is available on mobile, which matters in production environments where computers aren't always accessible.

How long does setup take?

Most accounts are operational within a few hours. Caska supports CSV import for customers, products, and inventory, so existing data doesn't need to be re-entered manually. There is no multi-week implementation process.

What happens to my data if I cancel?

Data can be exported at any time. Caska does not hold data hostage. Accounts can cancel at any time with no penalty. A 30-day money-back guarantee applies to new subscriptions.

Is Caska only for manufacturers? What about food distributors or caterers?

Caska is specifically designed for manufacturers — businesses that produce their own products. It may be useful for distributors or food service businesses in limited ways, but the core features (recipe costing, production tracking, inventory drawdown) are built around a manufacturing workflow.

What is the difference between the Starting, Growing, and Scaling plans?

All three plans include the same features. The difference is in the number of customers and users the account supports. Starting supports up to 20 customers and 1 user. Growing supports up to 50 customers and 3 users. Scaling supports unlimited customers and unlimited users. Most solo operators or small teams start on Starting or Growing and upgrade as the business expands.