Since Natasha's Law, partnerships are integral to ensuring customer data is transferred accurately and seamlessly. To show this in action, we'll be highlighting the great work of each of our many integration partners over the coming months. To kick off, we are delighted to turn the spotlight on our like-minded partner, Zupa, and its cloud-based catering management system, Caternet.

We caught up with Neil Shayle, Chief Operating Officer at Zupa, to discuss our partnership, the benefits to customers, and what’s next for its software.

Caternet is a cloud-based catering management platform that helps streamline procurement processes, inventory, recipe management, and compliance, ensuring complete control and visibility over catering operations in real time. 

Starting as a family-run business and an IT department within a contract caterer, Zupa has been helping customers for around 20 years. The business became independent in 2011 and now offer services to other contract caterers, education and care establishments, hotels, restaurants and coffee shops.

The integration with Planglow came about when a mutual client enquired whether Zupa/Caternet had a connection with LabelLogic Live. After meeting with the Planglow team, it was an easy decision to work in partnership. On working with Planglow, Neil told us:

“The Planglow team have been great. Working through the initial concept, gathering information, and working through the technical specifications was straight forward and an easy dialogue to have. Any technical issues that invariably come up, have been resolved quickly and carefully to the benefit of the mutual client.”

In the diagram below, you can see how the system works with data flowing from Erudus, another of our integration partners, through Caternet to Planglow. Neil tells customers, “For the full labelling solution, we partner with Planglow who are the market leaders in this field.”

We’re pleased to offer this integration, but how does Zupa choose who to partner with? 

Neil explains, “We know we cannot directly provide every answer to every client’s problem, nor would we want to, as it means we would lose focus on what we do best. On that basis, we like to partner with other more specialist providers who add value overall to our mutual clients. With this in mind, we see Planglow as the market leader in its field.

"On many occasions when meeting with clients or potential clients, many are completely unaware that such integrations exist. This results in them creating a recipe bank with all the data they need for a label output and then recreating this within a labelling solution like Planglow. Having access and knowledge of these integrations saves clients from double entry and manual repetitive tasks.”

At Planglow we’re keen to offer the best solution to our customers, and integrations with other solutions can help us achieve this. Likewise, Neil told us: 

“It is very rare to find a complete SaaS solution that does everything a client would need in one provider. Invariably those that say they do everything will have limitations and may not work as well as they should. Having robust and well-established integrations with like-minded providers allows clients to have multiple solutions available to choose from, and to help understand the best technology packages to use in their wider technology eco-system to run their business effectively and profitably.”

Well said Neil! Let’s end with Zupa’s latest developments.

“We continue to reinvest into our product and services which includes an upgraded user interface, a new and improved menu management module, and a major upgrade to our infrastructure and hardware, meaning our clients’ experience of using Caternet is quicker and slicker.”

Discover more about our partners and integrations here.

Find out more about our market-leading label software, LabelLogic Live. Interested in partnering with us too. Get in touch.