Filipino Food Company Makes Podio its Digital Office

03.07.12 Posted in Customer Stories by Lilly Hanscom

Ramar Foods is one of those Podio users we love to hear from and jumped at the chance to meet, not just for the free samples of fresh Mango icecream, but because their App Story takes place in a traditional, manufacturing environment – a stronghold of conventional business practices and, shall we say, some outdated technology.

Established in 1969 at the San Jose Flea Market in California, today Ramar Foods employs 150 people and ships more than 100 products from three factories at Pittsburg (CA), Los Angeles and Honolulu. Its Pittsburg, California, location is where Ramar Foods’ HQ hosts its onsite ice-creamery and distribution center, located far from the hubbub of Silicon Valley. Not only does the company produce and distribute some of the finest, authentic Filipino Foods to supermarkets and restaurants nationally, they use Podio to run their entire operation. That makes us very happy.

When we visited Ramar Foods’ office just outside of San Francisco (home of said Mango icecream factory), we were met by third generation owner and VP of Marketing (and resident Podio evangelist) PJ Quesada. PJ’s story is a familiar one: after a long struggle to find just the right tools for his business, PJ discovered Podio’s flexibility, affordability and mobile support was exactly what he’d been missing. As PJ explains in this App Story, Podio has become the company’s “digital office” and now the team never misses a project deadline.

To improve the way they run projects, Ramar Foods has built their very own customized CRM apps on Podio that link to the apps they use to manage product marketing. This enables them to connect each customer to price lists, promotions and point of sale units, saving time by keeping everything in one central system and adding business context to all their work.

Because Ramar operates in three separate locations, keeping its dispersed, and frequently traveling, team up-to-date on project developments was critical for PJ in choosing Podio. As an owner-operator, PJ needed to stay closely involved in every aspect of the business, with an insight into each product arm, company location and project team. While on the road, PJ keeps up to date by using Podio on his iPhone and iPad, spending just 30 minutes at the end of a field-day scrolling through his Podio workspaces and Podio inbox to make sure he’s in the loop on the day’s issues and outcomes, no matter where he is in the country:

“Our team currently resides in North California, South California, and Hawaii; now I haven’t moved to Hawaii yet, but when I do it’s not going to be a issue because having a platform like Podio enables all of us to be in the same digital office, so our workspace doesn’t change even though our workplace might.”