A world-class butcher running a world-class operation on a flip-phone workflow.
From the moment Jeremy Losier opened The Packing House Inc. in Hamilton's Barton Village, the craft was never in question. His 5,000-square-foot facility — one of the few in Southern Ontario still dedicated to whole animal butchery — was producing some of the finest dry-aged beef, hand-crafted sausage, and specialty cuts available to restaurants and retailers across the region. Wagyu. Heritage pork. Custom grow-outs. Local bison. The product mix was exceptional.
The workflow to sell it was not.
Jeremy ran his wholesale operation almost entirely by phone and personal relationship. Chefs who knew him called on Tuesdays to ask what was coming out of the dry-age room that week. Butcher shops placed their standing orders by email — or didn't, because there was no formal standing order system. Caterers had no way to browse the full catalog, which meant they ordered the cuts they knew about and never discovered the rest. Custom sausage runs were announced informally, and quantities were guessed based on who might call in before the batch was full.
The discovery problem was the biggest invisible cost. Buyers who knew The Packing House existed were ordering a fraction of what they could have been. Buyers who didn't have Jeremy's number directly never found the operation at all. A five-thousand-square-foot facility full of exceptional product had no digital front door.
The invoicing situation compounded the pressure. Net terms are standard in restaurant supply. But Jeremy was tracking outstanding accounts by memory and text message threads. When accounts reached 45 days, the follow-up was a personal call — time-consuming, occasionally awkward, and entirely manual. He was not a collections operation. He was a butcher who had inadvertently become one.
The harder truth was simpler: Jeremy's skill was in the cutting room, not in the back office. He had spent a decade building the craft — sourcing relationships with Ontario farms, perfecting dry-age timing, learning every cut from nose to tail. Building a digital sales infrastructure wasn't his expertise and wasn't where he wanted to spend his time. He needed someone to build it for him.
"My phone was my catalog, my order system, my invoicing reminder, and my CRM all at once. It worked when we were smaller. But every chef I wanted to reach — I had to reach personally. There was no way for someone new to find us and just order."
— Jeremy Losier, Founder & President, The Packing House Inc.
A wholesale portal that finally let the product catalog speak for itself.
The brief was clear within the first hour of our audit. The Packing House needed three things: a browsable catalog that showed the full product range, a pre-order mechanism for limited and batch-produced items, and a connected invoicing system that removed Jeremy from the payment follow-up cycle. Everything else was secondary.
We built the portal in 14 days. Here's what went live on day one:
- Full wholesale catalog with product storytelling. Every SKU on the portal carries source farm information, aging details, and cut specifications — the context that makes a chef choose dry-aged brisket over a competitor's commodity equivalent. Specialty items (Wagyu, local bison, heritage pork, game birds) have their own featured sections. Browsability replaced the need to know what to ask for.
- Custom sausage pre-order system. Each batch is listed as a limited pre-order with a close date tied to production scheduling. Buyers reserve quantities before the batch runs. Jeremy now knows exactly how much to produce before a sausage run starts — no waste, no over-production, no underselling.
- Tiered wholesale accounts with custom pricing. Long-standing restaurant accounts, butcher shop partners, and catering businesses each have their own login and pricing tier. A caterer paying volume rates doesn't see a chef's negotiated price, and vice versa. Account history and purchase patterns are visible per buyer.
- Standing order templates for regular buyers. Accounts with predictable weekly needs — the Hamilton restaurant taking 10 lbs of house sausage every Thursday — built standing templates. One confirmation per week. No call. The order generates and queues for delivery on the next scheduled run.
- Net-30 invoicing connected to QuickBooks Online. Orders generate invoices automatically. Outstanding amounts are visible by account and by aging bucket (current, 30, 60, 90 days). Automated reminders replaced Jeremy's personal follow-up calls. Collections became a system, not a conversation.
- Delivery scheduling with $400 minimum order logic. The portal enforces The Packing House's existing $400 minimum for delivery across the Hamilton and Southern Ontario delivery zone. Buyers who fall short are prompted to add to their order. Under-minimum orders are flagged for pickup instead. Delivery routes are grouped automatically.
We migrated all existing buyer accounts — contact details, pricing tiers, purchase history, outstanding invoices — during the build window. Every active account had a portal login and pre-loaded order history by go-live. The adoption friction was low because the portal arrived looking like it had been running for months.
The specialty discovery effect showed up in the first week. Buyers who had been ordering standard beef cuts found the Wagyu and bison sections on their own. Several restaurants added specialty items to their standing orders within the first 30 days — without Jeremy making a single sales call.
78% digital. 14 hours back per week. Sausage batches now selling out before production starts.
The restaurant accounts with the highest order frequency adopted within the first ten days — chefs who had been calling Jeremy twice a week found the catalog and realized they had been ordering a narrow slice of what was available. Standing order templates replaced the weekly calls. Within 30 days, most active restaurant accounts were operating entirely through the portal.
The pre-order system changed the economics of custom sausage production entirely. Previously, Jeremy estimated batch sizes based on what he thought he'd sell. With the portal, batches are listed as limited pre-orders with a production date. Buyers reserve before production runs. The last three sausage batches sold out within 24 hours of listing — meaning the production decision was based on confirmed demand, not intuition.
"I used to spend half my week on the phone. Not talking about meat — talking about logistics. Did you get my order? Can we push the delivery? I never sent that invoice. Now my phone rings for the things that actually need a human conversation. The portal handles the rest."
— Jeremy Losier, Founder & President, The Packing House Inc.
The AR situation improved within the first billing cycle. Jeremy had full visibility into outstanding balances without opening a spreadsheet. The automated 30-day overdue reminder — a plain-language email from the portal — prompted payment responses faster than a personal call had. Average payment collection time dropped from 52 days to 31 days in the first quarter after go-live.
New buyers are now finding The Packing House through the catalog itself — restaurants and catering operations that searched for specialty meat suppliers in Hamilton and found the portal instead of just a phone number. The craft had always been there. Now there is finally a door.
The Packing House Inc. is a family-owned whole-animal butchery and wholesale meat supplier located at 673 Barton St E., Hamilton, Ontario. Founded by Jeremy Losier, The Packing House supplies restaurants, grocery stores, butcher shops, and catering operations across Southern Ontario with premium beef and specialty meats sourced from Ontario farms.
