Matthew Collins, the 5th of February 2026
Scottish food and drink wholesale runs on routine. The same customers order the same lines, often on the same day each week, for delivery on a set run. Much of that still happens by phone, by email and in a rep's notebook. The website, if there is one, is a brochure.
Shopify works well for this, as long as the build follows how trade buyers actually order. That means their prices on screen, a quick way to repeat last week's order, and an ERP link so stock and terms are right. We've done this for Fáilte Foods, a Scottish food wholesaler, on Shopify Plus with Microsoft Business Central.
What does a trade food buyer need from the store?
A café owner or a deli buyer isn't browsing. They're restocking between other jobs. The store has to respect that.
- Their own price, visible as soon as they log in.
- Pack sizes that match how they buy, by the case or by the unit.
- A reorder path that takes minutes, not a scroll through the whole range.
- Clear delivery information, so they know when the order will arrive.
- Product details they can rely on, from ingredients to storage.
Fáilte's store includes a custom favourites list, so customers can save the lines they buy and reorder with ease. In a business built on repeat orders, one feature like that does a lot of work.
Why do delivery dates shape the build?
Food wholesale is tied to delivery. A price, a cut-off and a delivery run can all depend on the date.
Standard themes aren't built around that. On Fáilte, we built a custom date-based pricing system for delivery processing. It sits alongside the Business Central integration, which synchronises orders and customers in real time.
If your business runs on delivery days, bring that into the first workshop. It affects the checkout, the account area, the ERP mapping and how orders reach the warehouse. It's much harder to add at the end.
Some wholesalers also want a check before certain orders are confirmed, such as a first order from a new account or an unusually large one. On Shopify Plus, B2B order review rules can send those orders to draft automatically.
How do you bring existing trade customers across?
Your best customers already order from you. The worry is losing them in the switch.
Fáilte had a core group of customers ordering regularly on the old Magento site. Preserving their order history, account data and uninterrupted access during cutover was the baseline, not a nice extra. After launch, customer onboarding onto the new platform rose by over 500%, driven largely by how straightforward the process had become. Conversion sits above 30%.
On any trade launch, we'd plan for these.
- A personal invitation for existing customers, with a clear reason to log in.
- Order history carried across, so reordering feels familiar from the first visit.
- A simple approval route for new trade customers.
- Your sales team ready to help buyers place their first order online.
Why tidy product data comes first
Wholesale ranges grow line by line over years. Codes, pack sizes and descriptions drift. Seasonal lines come and go and leave traces behind.
Before a Shopify build, agree which system owns each piece of product data. Usually the ERP holds codes, units, prices and stock. Shopify holds photography, descriptions and the way the range is organised for buyers. If Business Central is your ERP, our guide to connecting Shopify to Business Central covers that split in detail.
Visibility matters too. A drinks producer selling to the trade and to the public needs trade prices kept away from consumer discovery. Our note on hiding wholesale products from the Shop app explains the method we use.
Do you need to be near Edinburgh to work with us?
No. We're based in Belgium and we don't have an office in Scotland. Two of our clearest published projects are Scottish anyway. Fáilte Foods on the wholesale side, and Bosie, a heritage knitwear brand, on the retail side.
Workshops run on a call, with the same people from the first conversation to launch. That matters more on a wholesale project than a retail one. The edge cases live in the heads of the people who take the orders. Our page on working with Scottish brands covers both projects in more detail.
Where parallel helps
We build B2B commerce on Shopify for wholesalers who want trade buyers ordering online without a phone call. That includes the ERP link, the ordering tools and the move from your current platform.
If you run a Scottish food or drink wholesale business and your buyers still phone in their orders, book a call. We'll start with how your customers order today.