Universal Yums: Why Fulfil is the Strategic Foundation for Subscription Box Success

When you're sending out 100,000 subscription boxes monthly with snacks from around the world, operational complexity can either break your business or become your competitive moat. For Universal Yums, finding the right operational foundation meant the difference between thriving and joining the long list of subscription box failures.

"The business had grown somewhere between 200 to 300% year over year," explains Eli Zauner, CEO and Co-founder of Universal Yums. "We were also going through a transformation in our business model where we were starting to sell products individually instead of just as a subscription box."

This business evolution created demands that basic systems couldn't handle. With 200+ global suppliers, FDA compliance requirements, seasonal planning constraints, and expiring food products, Universal Yums faced challenges that spreadsheets and manual processes couldn't solve.

As Universal Yums scaled, maintaining their commitment to customer satisfaction became increasingly difficult. "Especially in 2020 and 2022. We shipped the boxes every month at great sacrifice at times," Zauner emphasizes. "I rode a forklift around in 2020 to get boxes out the door."

Fulfil: Purpose-Built for Direct-to-Consumer Complexity

What Universal Yums needed wasn't just any ERP solution, but one specifically designed for their unique business model with specialized capabilities for food operations. This is why they chose Fulfil.

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Unlike generic ERPs that would require extensive customization, Fulfil provided out-of-the-box functionality aligned with their needs:

• Food-Specific Capabilities: "Fulfil allows us to track all of our inventory with expiration dates and has implemented automation rules that allow us to automate first expiring, first out logic," notes Zauner.
• Intuitive User Experience: Joe Thompson, who joined Universal Yums' as Vice President Procurement with previous experience in Microsoft Dynamics and NetSuite, emphasizes, "The system itself is extremely user-friendly, more so than other ERPs I've used. Because it was built from the ground up, there's less bloat."
• Accessible Learning Curve: "Its learning curve is smaller than any other ERP system that I've used," Joe continues, highlighting why the team could quickly adopt and leverage the system.‍
• Operational Flexibility: "I can drill down from a bill of materials to the item card, then to the vendor, in just a few clicks," notes Joe, explaining how Fulfil's design supported their complex workflows.

Most importantly, Fulfil offered Universal Yums a way to transform operational complexity from a liability into a competitive advantage. While other subscription box companies struggled to scale their operations, Fulfil gave Universal Yums the foundation to thrive where competitors couldn't.

Efficiency That Wins Markets

With Fulfil as their foundation, Universal Yums has transformed operational excellence into their key competitive advantage. This strategic shift enabled them to:

Scale Without Proportional Headcount: "In the past, before Fulfil, our process of printing labels was extensive. It required at least two to three people," Lopez explains. "With Fulfil, we were able to cut that down to one person." This efficiency allows Universal Yums to operate a $40 million business with just 50 team members.

Accelerated Production Cycles: The platform's real-time visibility has enabled Universal Yums to dramatically compress their production timelines. "Our production window for our subscription box was a 30-day window," Jarroush explains. "We've cut that down to 15 days. That's significant." This compression frees up substantial capacity for other business initiatives without requiring additional headcount.

Handle Peak Volumes: "By the fifth of the month, we start outputting up to 10,000 boxes in a day. During peak season, we can output up to 20,000 boxes in a day," notes Lopez. 

Proactively Manage Quality Issues: "Fulfil has allowed us to trace back a batch number to a pallet ID. And that allows us to resolve any issues proactively instead of accidentally shipping something and then it's gone in the network," Lopez explains. This traceability enhances customer satisfaction and reduces waste.

Real-Time Operational Visibility: This comprehensive visibility transforms how Universal Yums manages their complex operations. "We now have real-time data as to when products are hitting the door, when products are moving to production, how long it's taking for that production to complete, when we're getting those items out the door to our customers," explains Jarroush. This real-time insight enables proactive decision-making rather than reactive firefighting.

Enable Strategic Inventory Decisions: Rather than guessing at inventory positions, Universal Yums now has real-time visibility across all their SKUs. This precision allows them to confidently manage seasonal offerings that require different handling based on country of origin and time of year, ensuring they maximize shelf life while minimizing waste.

Master Multi-Channel Inventory Allocation: One of the most complex challenges Universal Yums faced was managing inventory across multiple sales channels with different requirements. "Amazon, Retail, and Subscription have unique output SKUs and shared input SKUs," explains Zauner. This means that while they might use the same input components (individual snacks), the finished products for each channel have different requirements. Fulfil's inventory management capabilities allow them to allocate inventory appropriately across Amazon, DTC subscription boxes, their Yum Shop, and retail partners.

Diversify Carrier Mix and Reduce Shipping Costs: Fulfil's native shipping carrier integrations with USPS have led to six-figure annual shipping cost savings. 

Beyond direct integrations, Fulfil's partnership approach extends to carrier recommendations. When Universal Yums needed to optimize their international shipping, Fulfil connected them with Passport, a carrier already integrated within their ecosystem. "Fulfil was able to recommend a carrier that they're already integrated with called Passport," explains Joseph Jarroush, Universal Yums' COO. "We ended up getting a very competitive rate card and selected Passport as our international carrier." The result was both cost savings and significantly improved service levels compared to their previous international carriers.

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Unified Data: The Foundation for Strategic Decisions

One of Fulfil's most transformative impacts has been establishing a single source of truth that enables better business decisions across the organization.

"Being a company where we've generally prioritized finding the best in class software for each individual use case, one of the challenges that's created for us is data is very fragmented across many different systems, and that makes collaboration harder," Zauner explains.

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This unified data foundation doesn't just reduce confusion, it enables cross-functional collaboration and strategic decision-making:

• Marketing can see inventory levels to plan promotions for products that need to move before expiration
• Procurement can confidently plan with visibility into current inventory and sales trends
• Operations can optimize workflows with access to real-time data across the organization
• Finance can make informed decisions with reliable data on costs, inventory value, and fulfillment metrics

This unified approach creates tangible operational synergies across teams. "The fact that engineering, supply chain and operations can speak the same language when it comes to this one system that is the common denominator amongst them is incredibly helpful," notes Joseph Jarroush, Universal Yums' COO. "It really helps energize those groups and there's this synergy between them."

Extending Beyond the Platform

While Fulfil's core capabilities provide a strong foundation, Universal Yums has leveraged its extensibility to address unique business requirements that no off-the-shelf solution could handle.

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For example, Universal Yums built a custom MRP solution to handle varying expiration date requirements across sales channels: "One retailer requires 180 days, another retailer requires 90 days of shelf life remaining when we ship it to them. My consumer, when I ship to them directly, I only need 30 days on it."

What makes this approach powerful is that Fulfil remains the central data repository: "What we were able to do is build our own software where we could use Fulfil as the system of record for all of the data so that we didn't need to be storing data in some outside database."

This extensibility combined with AI capabilities creates new possibilities: "I have been getting a ton of value out of using AI to build custom software or extend Fulfil's functionality."

Partnership That Enables Success

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More than just software, Fulfil provides Universal Yums with a strategic partnership that supports their business objectives at multiple levels.

"When I think about how we collaborate with Fulfil, I feel like we collaborate at three different levels," Zauner explains. "The first line of defense is the support team. The second line for us is our merchant success manager. And then the third level is the leadership team at Fulfil."

This multi-tiered partnership ensures Universal Yums receives both day-to-day tactical support and strategic guidance:

• Responsive Support: "The response time is fast, the responses are direct, and there's already an understanding of who we are, what we're doing, and how our data works," notes Joe.
• Ongoing Strategic Guidance: Their merchant success manager "understands what we do at a deeper level than each individual support agent is able to do," explains Zauner.
• Executive Engagement: "The leadership team is very client focused. Definitely makes you feel heard as a client. Like someone is designing features for you and understands your business," notes Zauner.

This partnership approach creates genuine business value beyond typical vendor relationships. "We don't feel like we're just another customer with Fulfil," Jarroush emphasizes. "We feel like they truly value us as a partner as much as we value them as a partner."

The Operators Insight

For operators considering Fulfil, Zauner offers a critical insight: "I have learned that if you really want to make the most out of Fulfil and if you run a more operationally intensive business, you should not disconnect from the software. It is a tool that will amplify you in whatever direction you are going."

This perspective highlights the strategic nature of Fulfil as more than just software. It's a business amplifier. "If you take the time to refine your business practices and how you're using the software, it will empower you to have a competitive advantage over others."

With this foundation, Universal Yums continues to expand confidently into new markets. "This year we're going to be doing some stuff with retail as well," shares Zauner. "It could be a big new market for us."

For Universal Yums, Fulfil isn't just an operational tool. It's the strategic foundation that's enabled them to transform complexity into competitive advantage, surviving and thriving where most competitors have failed.

Takeaways

• Fulfil provided a purpose-built foundation for Universal Yums' direct-to-consumer subscription model
• The platform's food-specific capabilities addressed critical needs like expiration date tracking and First-Expired-First-Out (FEFO) automation, which proved essential for managing their complex inventory of international snacks with varying shelf lives.
• Unified data eliminated silos and enabled cross-functional collaboration, allowing engineering, supply chain, and operations teams to "speak the same language" through one system
• Operational excellence enabled Universal Yums to survive and thrive while 18 competitors disappeared from the market, with production cycles compressed from 30 days to 15 days
• Extensibility and strategic partnership support ensure the platform evolves with their unique business requirements, from custom MRP solutions to carrier recommendations that deliver both cost savings and improved service levels

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