Upfront Conclusion
The best food industry crm software right now is SapphireOne and Creatio
Restaurants. Cafes. Market stalls. We all love trying new food and experiencing new flavors, so much so that the global food industry was worth $8.7 trillion US dollars in 2021*! Whether it’s a payday treat or a weekly date night, consumers enjoy spending money on food and escaping the routine of daily life. However, with rising competition, it is more important than ever for businesses within the food industry to differentiate themselves, offer something new, and keep customers returning. Word-of-mouth plays a considerable role in the food industry, so ensuring your customers leave with a sweet taste in their mouths will contribute to your success. The best way to understand what will keep your customers returning is to learn more about who they are. We have put together a list of the top customer relationship management software for the food industry.
Top 5 CRM for the food industry
- SapphireOne – best for building stronger relationships
- Creatio – best for customer segmentation
- Upserve – best for creating targeted marketing campaigns
- Toast – best for improving efficiency
- The Access Group – best for enhancing the customer journey
1. SapphireOne – best for building stronger relationships
Pricing: not available on the website. Free demo available
SapphireOne CRM software can strengthen the relationships with your customers before, during and, after the sale. The software stores your prospective, existing, and former customers’ information to help you understand more about your demographic and communicate more effectively with them. There are also real-time insights into sales and inventory at any given point to help manage stock levels without having to check the stockroom physically.
Key features:
- A list of current and previous customers, their details, and activity history
- Automation of day-to-day tasks
- View your current inventory and financial position
- Integrated ‘Soft-Phone’ technology to keep a log of your phone calls for training purposes
- Manage invoices, payments, and expenses, removing manual data entry
Reasons to buy:
- Learn about your customer demographic and their preferences
- Improve your customer service by spending less time on repetitive tasks
- Create targeted marketing campaigns based on the data
- Avoid low stock levels with real-time inventory tracking
- Work via mobile, desktop, or tablet
Reasons to avoid:
- Pricing is not available on the website
- Customization of the software will be an extra annual cost
- The software was reviewed as “vast” and “overwhelming”
2. Creatio – best for customer segmentation
Pricing: starting from $1,000 per year
Creatio is a CRM software designed to give you all-around knowledge about your customers, pulling data from your touchpoints. Creatio allows business owners to create targeted and complex marketing campaigns through segmenting customers depending on socio-demographics and behavioral data. The data enables business owners to send more effective marketing communications to different groups of people interested in other things.
Key features:
- A 360-degree view of each of your customers
- Identify and follow up will new leads
- Reporting and analytics to understand your lead conversion performance
- Segment customers depending on each of their needs
- Create personalized and targeted email marketing campaigns
Reasons to buy:
- More significant insights into your customers’ preferences
- Improve lead conversion through targeted emails
- Build customer profiles using socio-demographic data
- Automate workflows that trigger emails when a prospect enters the campaign
- Improve productivity by integrating team calendars
Reasons to avoid
- Pricing increases as your contacts and users increase
- Lack of training materials for new business owners
- Filtering features are limited
3. Upserve – best for creating targeted marketing campaigns
Pricing: starting from $59 per month
Upserve was designed specifically for the food industry to help them improve the return on their marketing. The software allows you to build customer profiles of their favorite products, dishes, the time they visit, and their preferred locations to give you an insight into what kind of marketing will encourage them to re-purchase. The promotions and campaigns can be tracked to see how effective and attractive they were to your customers.
Key features:
- Build comprehensive customer profiles
- Create insight-driven marketing campaigns
- Identify trends using reporting tools on what products are most popular
- Track the success of promotions and email marketing
- Monitor your reputation across multiple review websites
Reasons to buy:
- Create more cost-effective marketing campaigns
- Learn more about who your customers are and what they prefer
- 24/7 professional support available
- Integrates with a variety of third-party platforms
- Manage inventory to control food waste and stock levels
- It can be managed on a mobile app or desktop
Reasons to avoid
- Custom reporting is an additional add on with the Starter and Pro packages
- Upserve POS hardware must be purchased for $60 per location
4. Toast – best for improving efficiency
Pricing: starting from $0 per month
Toast is ideal for businesses in the food industry that have a physical location, like a restaurant or a café. The software combines data from POS hardware such as handheld tablets for ordering, kitchen display systems and, checkout tills. The data can be used to spot trends, track customers, and understand how to promote repeat customs. There are automated email marketing tools that send out communications to different groups of customers depending on how frequently they have purchased with you.
Key features:
- Create custom lists of different customer types
- Improve efficiency with contactless ordering
- Run promotions and send email marketing to encourage sales
- Measure the success of your targeted campaigns
- Build customer loyalty programs
Reasons to buy:
- One software to run your whole business
- It is free for smaller companies who need only one or two POS terminals
- You can create custom packages for more prominent businesses
- 24/7 professional support available
- POS hardware integrates with the performance tracking software to give real-time updates
Reasons to avoid:
- It is a significant software with POS hardware included, which some businesses may not need
- Reporting is not comprehensive
- Not ideal for companies looking for a simple CRM software
5. The Access Group – best for enhancing the customer journey
Pricing: not available on the website
The Access Group is software with features included to improve the whole customer journey. The software can combine customer data into a single view, build campaigns, receive inquiries, build surveys, and run loyalty programs. The pricing isn’t included on the website as you pay per feature to make the software more cost-effective as you are only paying for the elements you need.
Key features:
- View all your customer data in one view
- Gather feedback from customer inquiries
- Build loyalty programs and marketing emails
- Track social media posts
- Interactive insights and reporting
- Wide variety of integrations are available
Reasons to buy:
- Select and purchase only the features that your business needs
- Save time by replying to multiple social media feeds from one interface
- Automatically import customer data from various sources
- Encourage repeat custom with loyalty incentives and voucher codes
- Identify trends using comprehensive reporting tools that measure dates, locations, segmentation, and campaigns
Reason to avoid:
- Pricing per feature is unknown
- Customer support was reviewed as “poor”
- Pricing was reported to increase year on year
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is CRM used for in the food industry?
A customer relationship management system is used in the food industry to manage interactions with customers, track sales, learn more about who your clients are, and try to build customer loyalty through data-driven marketing campaigns.
Why does a business in the food industry need a CRM?
Businesses in the food industry often face high levels of competition and busy workloads. Companies need to be aware of their customer profiles, sales trends, and business performance to help them stand out. The knowledge will allow them to create differentiated products and promotional activities to engage new prospects and encourage existing customers to return to your business. A CRM will build this picture for you and automatically pull data from multiple sources, saving you time and giving you oversight of the customer journey.
What kind of businesses are in the food industry?
The food industry comprises of a global supply chain from agriculture through to processing, manufacturing, packaging, transport, and sales. Businesses such as restaurants, bakeries, cafés, market stall owners, sole traders, and fast-food chains are often at the end of the supply chain and are the point of contact between the product and the end consumers. For food retailers, understanding the customer can help to make more informed choices and decisions when making purchases at earlier points in the supply chain. For example, if your customer prefers organic produce, the agriculture must come from organic fields.
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