Market Wego
A family-owned Cajun specialty market, transformed into a software-run 12-person operation — 22% lower cost, 40% fewer manual hours, 28% YoY e-commerce growth.
22% ↓ operating cost40% ↓ manual reporting28% ↑ e-commerce YoY12-person team
Context
When I stepped in, Market Wego ran on memory and spreadsheets — the kind of operation that scales until the manager goes on vacation. The owners knew what they wanted (more reach, less chaos); they didn't have the time to figure out how to get there.
This case study isn't about a single launch. It's about a multi-year transformation where every quarter I asked: what's the next manual hour we can compress?
What I built — and rebuilt
22%Operating cost reduction
40%Fewer manual reporting hours
28%YoY e-commerce growth
35%Faster team ramp
Selected systems brought online:
- Cloud POS with inventory automation and per-SKU margin reporting.
- Reporting pipeline — daily ops digest auto-generated and emailed to ownership; replaced a Sunday-afternoon manual roll-up.
- E-commerce surface with analytics; cohort tracking on Cajun-spice repeat customers.
- SOPs and onboarding flow — codified across kitchen, retail, customer service, admin.
- Vendor management — contract renegotiation cycle, $15K+ annual supply-chain savings.
Decisions & trade-offs
The fastest way to scale a 12-person operation is to remove the work that's only there because no one wrote it down.
Outcome
- Operation is durable — the owner can step away for a week without the wheels falling off.
- Ramp time for a new team member cut from ~6 weeks to under 4.
- E-commerce now contributes a meaningful slice of revenue, growing 28% year over year.
- The exact transformation pattern — systems through software, applied to a small ops — is what became Zavio.