<< Back to All Partner Success Stories

Sustainable Success: Leveraging IT Nation Evolve to Propel Community Food Co-op Forward

Litzia

Since 2005, Litzia has provided managed IT, network security, cloud transformation and more for Bellingham, Whatcom, Skagit, Snohomish and King County businesses of all sizes. Their support enables owners to focus more on providing expert service to their loyal customers and less on their backend IT, data and security needs.

Challenge
One of Litzia’s top clients, Community Food Co-op, began with just one small location in Bellingham but has since grown to two 10,000-square-foot stores and one mixed-use office building. With the shift from one small building to three large ones, keeping systems aligned and running simultaneously across locations has been challenging.
Solution
Litzia supports Community Food Co-op with a co-managed IT solution, deploying services that enable, optimize and support its point-of-sale system, refrigeration, power and internet access. With eyes set on continued growth, Community Food Co-op also leans on Litzia for consulting and forecasting services. Litzia, who’s been a ConnectWise Partner for more than 15 years, uses a combination of IT Nation Evolve™ peer groups, ConnectWise Manage and Service Leadership to deliver stability and security to Community Food Co-op.
Results
Through dedicated support, service and expertise, Litzia helps Community Food Co-op stay on top of their technology. This enables the grocer to continue providing honest and ethical service to its growing customer base while devising a strategy for continued growth.

“Some of the ConnectWise tools that make us heroes in our client's eyes are the IT Nation Evolve peer groups, as well as ConnectWise PSA and service leadership”

“The industry has changed continually, and over the last fifteen years, ConnectWise has been there along that journey in many different ways”

Keeping Up With Demand

Driven by its mission to create a more sustainable economy by selling local, natural and organic groceries, member-owned Community Food Co-op is one of the largest in the country.

“The biggest fear in running our business is downtime,” Edholm explains. “We have people in our stores twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.” All of Community Food Co-ops systems — from the cash registers to ordering equipment and the software they use to pay their staff is digital. “Anything that interferes with that causes trouble,” says Edholm.

Solidifying Systems To Reduce Waste and Facilitate Growth

Throughout their partnership, Litzia has helped Community Food Co-op build redundancies into its ever-growing systems.

“We assist in ensuring that their system runs flawlessly so their customers can run transactions. We also support other infrastructure such as wireless equipment, power requirements, internet and store-to-store access, as well as consulting and forecasting for their future,” examples Henderson.

Perhaps unexpectedly, Litzia also enables the co-op’s refrigeration monitoring system, where they send alerts if temperatures dip below a certain level. As such, the Community Food Co-op can get ahead of potential refrigeration issues to reduce food waste and shrinkage across its stores.

Moreover, any amount of downtime could mean lost product or lost revenue. With Litzia’s help, “one issue at one store does not bring the whole system down everywhere,” says Edholm.

Helping Each Other So Community Food Co-op Can Continue To Serve Its Community

Litzia has been a ConnectWise Partner for more than 15 years. We’ve provided the tools and support Litzia needs to deliver stability to the Community Food Co-op.

“Some of the ConnectWise tools that make us heroes in our client's eyes are the IT Nation Evolve peer groups, as well as ConnectWise PSA and service leadership,” says Henderson.

The IT Nation Evolve peer groups and service leadership specifically have allowed Litzia to “have those executive conversations around the boardroom,” Henderson explains, which helps them educate their customers “to know which levers to pull for success.”

For Community Food Co-op, which plans to keep growing, staying on top of its technology is a major catalyst for expansion.

“We’re a small grocery store competing against some huge national companies with many, many resources,” says Edholm. “So, we’re also looking to keep up with those trends and be aware of them and take advantage of them no matter what size we are.”

Between ConnectWise, Litzia and Community Food Co-op, there’s a three-way symbiotic relationship that enables success for all parties, but especially the community that relies on the co-op for fair and honest service and sustainable food.

“The industry has changed continually, and over the last fifteen years, ConnectWise has been there along that journey in many different ways,” says Henderson.