ERP Integration That Understands Food and Beverage

Food retailers and beverage distributors opening online channels or operating B2B ordering platforms for hospitality and retail face a specific integration problem: the ERP manages stock not just by quantity but by batch and expiry date. First-Expired-First-Out logic (FEFO) determines which batch is actually picked for an order. The shop must understand this logic, but should not simply expose all batch details externally – what matters to the customer is the available quantity and the earliest best-before date they can expect.

Add to this the seasonal price fluctuations that occur at short intervals for raw materials such as grain, fruit or meat. An assortment that covers 800 articles today can change significantly within a few weeks due to harvest fluctuations or supply chain issues. The integration must handle these dynamics and deactivate product pages or point to alternatives, rather than displaying outdated availability. Our middleware solutions map exactly these food-specific data flows.

The EU Food Information to Consumers Regulation (FIC) obligates online retailers to provide complete labelling information for pre-packaged foods. This includes the ingredients list, the 14 major allergens, nutritional declarations, weight and quantity details and storage instructions. Anyone who displays this information incompletely or incorrectly risks warnings and fines. The problem for many retailers: the information resides in the ERP or PIM but is transferred manually to the shop – with all the associated risks to currency and completeness.

We synchronize FIC-relevant product data fully automatically from your ERP or PIM into the shop. Allergens are transferred as machine-readable flags, not as free text, so that the shop interface can highlight them consistently and customers can filter for allergen-free products. Nutritional tables are displayed in the standardized EU format. When a supplier changes the recipe and your ERP updates the allergen information, the shop adopts the new information at the next synchronization cycle without manual intervention. This closes the gap between ERP master data and legally compliant shop presentation.

In a food warehouse, picking is not done by article number but by batch and best-before date. FEFO logic ensures that goods with the earliest expiry date are picked first. For an online shop, this means: the displayed stock level must reflect the actually pickable quantity under FEFO conditions. If an article has 500 units in stock but 200 of them already fall below the minimum remaining shelf life, the shop should show at most 300 units as available for short-term delivery.

Our integration solution connects with the warehouse management system and reads batch data, BBD information and FEFO reservations. The shop receives a consolidated stock value that shows the actually sellable quantity taking all remaining shelf life rules into account. If rules change – for example because a major customer requires a minimum remaining shelf life of 60 days – this condition is stored in the middleware and automatically factored into stock calculations. Learn more about the underlying API development that enables these data flows.

In the food and beverage sector we encounter different ERP landscapes. Large producers and retailers use SAP S/4HANA or ERP solutions with integrated quality management and batch management. Mid-sized companies often work with Microsoft Dynamics Business Central, which offers extensions for the food industry, or with specialized inventory systems such as JTL or Lexware. Regardless of the system in use, the core question is the same: how do batch information, BBD data and FIC-compliant product attributes reach the online shop safely and automatically?

We analyze the interfaces of your ERP system and develop an integration solution that retrieves exactly the data fields relevant for online commerce. Systems with REST APIs are connected directly. Older inventory management solutions communicate via structured file exports that our middleware processes. For SAP-based environments we use proven RFC connections or Business Application Programming Interfaces. DATEV integration for document flow rounds off every food project.

A product recall in the food sector is an emergency requiring fast and precise action. For an online retailer this means: the affected batch must be blocked in the shop immediately, all customers who ordered that batch must be identified and notified, and open orders must be cancelled or reboooked to alternative batches.

Our integration keeps every order linked to the delivered or reserved batch. In the event of a recall, a single batch number is sufficient to list all affected orders from the past months within seconds. The recall workflow blocks the batch in the shop, sets affected products to unavailable, generates a notification list and, if required, triggers automated emails to affected customers. The entire traceability chain is documented and can be prepared for regulatory enquiries.

Many food producers and traders are opening B2B channels for restaurants, caterers, canteens and organized food retail. These customers have their own requirements: they need specific pack sizes not intended for end consumers, they have framework contracts with agreed conditions, and they expect a reorder function based on their usual order quantities. In addition, nutritional information and allergen details are particularly relevant for hospitality customers, as they need them for their own menus and allergen labelling.

We develop B2B ordering platforms on the basis of Shopware Community Edition that reflect these specifics. Customer groups control which pack sizes are visible and which price conditions apply. The inventory system connection ensures that hospitality customers always see up-to-date availability and orders land directly as sales orders in the ERP – without manual entry by inside sales. Allergen and nutritional data can optionally be exported in machine-readable format so that restaurant customers can import them into their own systems. Further integration details are available under ERP Inventory Integration.

In food commerce, handling units of measure and pack sizes correctly is business-critical. A product can simultaneously be managed as a single pack (200g), a retail carton (12 units), a master carton (48 units) and on a pallet (240 units), each with different price units and EAN codes. The ERP manages all levels of the packaging hierarchy, and the shop must correctly map this structure for each customer type: end consumers see the single pack, hospitality buyers see the retail carton, large kitchens see the pallet.

Our integration maps multi-level packaging hierarchies in full. Each packaging level has its own EAN, its own price and its own minimum order quantity. Visibility of packaging levels is controlled by customer groups: a B2C shop shows only the single pack, a B2B portal for hospitality shows cartons and pallets with corresponding tiered prices. When the ERP introduces a new pack size, the shop adopts it automatically without manual intervention. The marketplace integration also benefits from this clean packaging structure.

In the food and beverage trade, the regulatory environment changes regularly. New labelling requirements, updated allergen classifications or changed proof-of-origin requirements must be incorporated into the integration. Our maintenance packages include timely adaptation to regulatory changes, proactive monitoring of all synchronization processes and quarterly reviews of data quality. Through automated contract tests we detect breaking changes to ERP interfaces at an early stage.

Particularly important in this sector is the continuous monitoring of data quality: missing allergen information or incomplete FIC data is not immediately obvious but can have legal consequences in an emergency. Our monitoring checks at every synchronization cycle whether all mandatory fields are populated and proactively reports gaps to your team. This keeps your integration not only technically stable but permanently compliant. Talk to us about long-term support for your industry solution.