Adopting Magento, now Adobe Commerce, in the food and beverage industry means taking sales to supermarkets, distributors, restaurants and neighborhood stores into a digital channel. Its main benefits are faster, error-free orders, customer-specific prices and catalogs, less dependence on the salesperson's visit and reliable data to plan demand.
For the senior leadership of a food and beverage company, the topic is not technological. It is about margin and cost to serve. Every order taken by phone, every printed catalog that becomes obsolete, every corrected invoice and every salesperson visit to a small customer who only wanted to repeat last week's purchase has a cost that is rarely measured. A well-designed B2B ecommerce channel frees the sales force to sell, protects pricing policy and gives the customer an easier way to buy. Implemented without a strategy, on the other hand, it becomes one more site that nobody uses.
The food and beverage industry combines conditions that make digitizing the commercial relationship highly profitable. Customers buy frequently, repeat many of the same products, work with narrow margins and expect punctual deliveries. At the same time, the customer base is usually very heterogeneous, from supermarket chains with negotiated contracts to small shops served by route.
The weight of the sector explains why it is worth it. In Costa Rica, for example, the Costa Rican Food Industry Chamber (CACIA) brings together more than 400 member industries that keep the food and beverage market supplied. According to the Chamber, the sector represents about 40% of industrial gross domestic product and 16% of exports, and small and medium-sized enterprises make up 67% of its participants. Its most recent data, cited by Teletica, place food industry output at close to 5% of GDP, with more than 105,000 direct jobs and exports of US$2.753 billion in 2025.
Many of these companies have already adopted best practices on the plant floor and automated production, administration, purchasing, marketing, sales and customer service processes. However, commercial and marketing management, which is what exposes the brand and brings it to the consumer, tends to lag behind. It needs tools that support transactions and customer information. These companies normally have their customers and territories categorized, and serve each one in a personalized way through telemarketing, sales agents and route salespeople who take orders or handle invoices on the same day as the visit. Each of those processes can be managed from the platform.
The behavior of professional buyers has already changed. The McKinsey study "Five fundamental truths: How B2B winners keep growing" found that B2B customers use an average of ten interaction channels in their buying process, that about a third prefer digital self-service options and that, among companies that offer ecommerce, online sales already account for 34% of revenue. Years earlier, Gartner had anticipated that most B2B sales interactions would occur in digital channels and that a third of buyers wanted a purchasing experience without a salesperson.
For a food manufacturer or distributor, this does not mean eliminating the route salesperson. It means deciding which part of the relationship is best resolved through self-service and which part deserves a person's time.
Magento is an ecommerce platform that is now part of Adobe's portfolio. Adobe markets it as Adobe Commerce and maintains an open-source version known as Magento Open Source. Adobe Commerce includes native functionality for business-to-business commerce, cloud hosting and personalization tools, and integrates with ERP, CRM and logistics systems. It is a robust platform, capable of supporting the daily transaction volume of a portal enabled for B2B customers, and flexible enough to serve both individual consumers and wholesale buyers, with subscription models, recurring orders and multiple payment methods.
The relevant difference for the food and beverage industry lies in the B2B module. The official Adobe Commerce B2B documentation describes capabilities designed precisely for business customers, summarized in the following table.
| B2B feature | What it does | Typical use in food and beverage |
|---|---|---|
| Company accounts | Groups several buyers from the same company with roles and permissions | A supermarket chain with buyers per store and a central approver |
| Shared catalogs | Defines products and prices specific to a company or customer group | Price lists negotiated by channel, chain or region |
| Quick order | Allows buying by SKU or name in a few clicks | Buyers who know their codes and repeat weekly orders |
| Requisition lists | Saves lists of frequently purchased products | Restaurants and stores that replenish the same assortment |
| Negotiable quotes | Opens a price negotiation between buyer and seller | Institutional orders, seasons and special volumes |
| Payment on credit and purchase orders | Purchase with a credit line and role-based approval flows | Corporate customers with credit terms and internal controls |
The real benefits appear when the platform is designed around the company's commercial model and not the other way around. These are the most relevant for the sector.
Most orders in consumer goods are repetitive. With requisition lists and quick order, the customer assembles a purchase in minutes and the order reaches the ERP without anyone re-entering it. That reduces errors in product, quantity and price, which in food translate into returns, credit notes and product that expires in the wrong warehouse.
Shared catalogs allow each chain, distributor or channel to see only the products it can buy and at the price it negotiated. For commercial leadership, the benefit is twofold. The customer has certainty about what they pay, and the company stops depending on manual exceptions that erode margin without anyone noticing. The platform can also show each customer only the SKUs they habitually buy, special offers for their category (for example, VIP customers or a special-date promotion), related products and cross-sell suggestions according to rules defined by the administrator.
A good implementation integrates the platform with the ERP to show in the customer's account their available credit, orders, invoices and commercial terms. The contract module lets each customer see the specific details of their negotiation, such as the responsible person, the contract date, the expiration date, the purchase terms and the credit, and request more detailed information, manage claims and send suggestions from their account. The customer checks without calling, and the service team spends its time on the cases that truly require attention.
The salesperson or route rep can show the catalog on a tablet or phone, record the order on the spot, issue the invoice and check the customer's history. Promotional leaflets and printed catalogs that become obsolete with every price change or launch, and that carry a very high cost in design, printing and paper, are eliminated. This way, the visit focuses on selling new products, negotiating display space and solving problems.
The customer categorization that many companies already do, by volume, type of business, purchase frequency or geographic area, can be translated into rules within the platform. This makes it possible to launch a promotion for neighborhood stores in one region without affecting chain prices, or to suggest complementary products based on what each customer buys.
In practice, customers are usually classified as A, B or C and segmented by geographic, demographic and behavioral criteria. Typical criteria are purchase volume, type of business (supermarket, supermarket chain, mini-market), the type of product purchased and purchase frequency. On that basis, dynamic rules can be applied, such as promotions or discounts personalized by birthday or for those who purchased a specific amount within a certain date range. Much of this information lives in the ERP, and the platform takes it to manage the sale. Tools such as gift cards in Magento expand those incentive possibilities.
When orders come in through a structured digital channel, the company obtains clean and timely information about what is bought, who buys it and how often. That information is the basis for better production and inventory planning, something critical when working with perishable products.
When the order, credit, invoice and purchase history live in integrated systems, sales, customer service and finance work with the same data. Internal arguments about which price was applied or whether an order was actually received are reduced, and the conversation with the customer becomes more agile. For leadership, this translates into reliable reports by customer, channel and region without consolidating spreadsheets at the end of every month.
If your company is evaluating the difference between selling to end consumers and to other businesses, our article on the importance of Magento B2B for business-to-business commerce goes deeper on that point, and the article on eCommerce and CRM, the ideal pair to increase your business sales explains how to connect the digital channel with commercial management.
Technology does not correct a confused commercial model. These are the most frequent risks in B2B ecommerce projects in the sector.
Adopting Magento in a food and beverage company is a commercial decision with impact across several links of the value chain.
These steps can begin next week with the leadership team, before selecting or configuring any platform.
ICX Consulting is a commercial strategy and customer experience firm headquartered in Miami that works with companies in the United States and Latin America, including food, beverage and consumer goods companies. Before talking about a platform, we help define the service model by segment, the pricing architecture and the role of the sales force, supported by our pricing strategy practice. Then our B2B ecommerce team takes that strategy to Adobe Commerce and integrates it with the ERP and CRM.
To start organizing the ordering process from your customer's perspective, we invite you to use the ICX customer journey toolkit, a practical tool to identify the friction points the digital channel must solve.
Adobe Commerce is the enterprise version of Magento, with Adobe support, cloud hosting and native B2B functionality. Magento Open Source is the free, open-source edition. For food and beverage companies selling to other businesses, the choice depends on volume, the integrations required and the internal capacity to maintain the platform.
Not necessarily. In most cases, the digital channel absorbs routine orders and frees up salesperson time to open new points of sale, negotiate display space and serve strategic customers. The key is to define clear attribution and compensation rules so that the sales force drives the channel instead of competing with it.
At a minimum, the ERP for inventory, prices, credit and invoicing. Then it is advisable to integrate the CRM so that sales and service see each customer's digital activity, and the logistics systems to report delivery status. Without these integrations, the channel generates more manual work than it eliminates.
With a pilot bounded to a segment of customers who buy frequently and in repetitive orders, such as independent stores or restaurants in one area. That group makes it possible to validate the catalog, prices and integrations, measure adoption and adjust the model before extending it to the rest of the customer base.
A food and beverage company that sells better through the digital channel serves more customers with the same team and protects its margin on every order. Do you want to know how much it costs you today to serve each order and what part could move to the digital channel? Request a diagnostic with an ICX Consulting consultant.