Café Fanny Granola

Claresco, Inc. announces a partnership with Café Fanny Granola, also of Berkeley, to design a custom software solution for product orders and tracking for its popular mail-order granola. The granola, which has been shipped as far away as Paris, is inspired by the family recipe of local restauranteur Alice Waters, owner of Berkeley's famous gourmet restaurant Chez Panisse and part owner of Café Fanny, located on Berkeley's San Pablo Avenue. In an industry dominated by off-the-shelf accounting systems for small businesses, it may seem surprising that a small family business would choose to pay for a customized software solution for its accounting needs. Yet that's exactly what Café Fanny Granola decided to do, in part to support local businesses and in part because they felt the personal contact offered by a local firm with a proven track record would be the right move for their new software. The customized program replaces an outdated system that the company simply stretched to the hilt. Claresco CEO Brett D'Ambrosio says that the value of customized software for a small company like Café Fanny Granola cannot be underestimated. "To make a value proposition case for customized software for a small business, you have to deliver a solution that is optimized to the way they work, and that works significantly better than an off-the-shelf solution," D'Ambrosio says. "By doing that, the company can realize a direct labor savings which offsets the additional cost of the custom solution." Café Fanny Granola accounting manager Cynthia Kitzinger says that the system will be a strong improvement over the existing system. "[Claresco is] replacing a DOS-based program that was written fifteen years ago," Kitzinger says. "It was crashing and losing data and I couldn't repair it anymore. We have an accounting software program for our other companies, but to add a module to that system for Café Fanny Granola was going to be very expensive. For a small company like us, if you're looking for somebody to write a piece of software you need somebody local who understands what you need." The accounting software will perform tasks specific to the business model at Café Fanny Granola. Specifically, Claresco will design a system that makes it possible for employees to track orders and process payments online, keep track of its customer base for marketing purposes and automatically print reports related to customer activity, including invoices, weight reports and packing lists. "Our West Coast clientele has expanded significantly in recent years, and we're very pleased to be working with Café Fanny Granola, which is a solid local Berkeley business," says D'Ambrosio.