Kitchen Kettle Village operates three primary operating companies and five business entities, spanning food services, manufacturing, retail sales, and lodging. The company experienced many challenges with its legacy ERP and disparate systems for managing functional areas including accounting, sales, inventory, and human resources.

The fragmented technology environment required extensive use of Excel spreadsheets and time-consuming manual data entry. From tracking inventory and sales to managing a workforce of approximately 250 employees and reporting financials, Kitchen Kettle Village faced operational inefficiencies that made future growth difficult.

While the leadership team believed the company had many of the right tools in place, they were unable to maximize their value.

According to Laura Robbins, Director of Training and IT Coordinator at Kitchen Kettle Village, “We knew we were using an outdated system and decided we needed to look for a new solution that could bridge the gaps that existed and give us the capacity to grow. First and foremost, we wanted somebody that would be a partner with us, support the whole process, and help us find the right solution for our unique business.”

Kitchen Kettle Village chose Cargas as its partner to determine the ideal solution for managing all aspects of its multi-faceted organization, including retail, food services, lodging, and manufacturing.

“From the very beginning—when we met their team—we were impressed with their professionalism and thoroughness,” explained Robbins

Cargas conducted a comprehensive systems assessment to evaluate Kitchen Kettle Village’s existing infrastructure, business processes, workflows, reporting requirements, and long-term objectives. This consultative approach helped create a roadmap for a successful implementation.

Cargas learned that, from an accounting and finance perspective, nothing was integrated.

According to Ken Kmieczak, CFO at Kitchen Kettle Village, closing the books and producing financial results required manually entering data into voluminous Excel spreadsheets.

“Then we had to cross-check multiple times to make sure the numbers were balanced,” Kmieczak shared. “Lo and behold, something was always out of balance. We’d have to spend hours trying to figure out what was causing the issue because nothing was really connected.”

In addition, the inventory management software didn’t automatically feed into the general ledger, and the POS systems, although they featured some integration with the ERP, only took things so far.

“We had to manually enter sales data into the financial system,” said Kmieczak.

According to Robbins, the amount of time Cargas spent digging into and learning about their business processes and goals was foundational to the successful implementation.

“They learned the ins and outs, who does what, and why we do what we do. Cargas made some really great recommendations about best practices because they understood the business just as well as we did.”

The implementation started in January of 2025, and Kitchen Kettle Village went live with Business Central in July of that year.

Kmieczak said that Cargas took what they learned from the discovery phase and worked with the Kitchen Kettle Village team through each part of the implementation process on a week-to-week basis.

Alongside Cargas, Kmieczak and Robbins co-ran the transition from the business side of things—involving the right team members from day one to ensure the people with first-hand knowledge of the operational nuances were part of the input and feedback loop.

“We really tried to keep everybody involved from the top down so everyone who would use the solution was a part of it,” explained Robbins. “After we went live, we threw a huge party and celebrated everything. We really tried to make it fun through the whole process so it wouldn’t feel overwhelming to the team.”

Although they had planned for the Cargas team to be on site with them every day for a week post-implementation, they realized that after day two of going live that the Kitchen Kettle team was already largely self-sufficient in using the solution. So much so that Kmieczak departed for a vacation in Greece just two weeks after the go-live date!

Integrations that automate populating data from Kitchen Kettle Village’s other software systems into the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central ERP have simplified workflows and saved the company significant time.

“Previously, closing our largest company’s books at the end of the month was an eight-day process. Now, with the integrations and efficiencies, we’re down to about two days to pull results each month,” explained Kmieczak. “We don’t have to do all of that through Excel spreadsheet balancing.”

He also shared that they can now move expenses between companies very quickly and easily. “What used to require five transactions to pass something between entities now only requires a line entry.”

Robbins said the solution has improved tracking and reporting sales as well. With the previous solution, the company’s retail POS system was siloed, and sales transactions had to be manually recorded in the ERP. They faced a similar problem with sales through their e-commerce platform.

She credits Cargas’s CJ McGuire, Systems Engineer, for aptly configuring the integrations to automate the flow of retail sales data into Dynamics 365 Business Central, which she said is “working amazingly well.”

Consensus across the team that uses the Cargas-implemented solution is, “Oh, this is so much easier,” Kmieczak shared.

Robbins said one of the most valuable aspects of Business Central is its ability to integrate with a vast number of different platforms. This has enabled the company to gain more capabilities, efficiencies, and a better return on their previous technology investments.

Kitchen Kettle Village has continued to work with Cargas after go-live to further improve operations and grow the business.

“We are currently working with Jon Clemens as we plan to adopt Microsoft Copilot and explore building a custom MCP server for Business Central. We learned how Cargas is using Copilot and connecting their data systems, and we’re interested in adopting a similar strategy. The goal is to give us AI-powered access to Business Central data and insights while keeping the solution within our Microsoft environment. The next project that we’re partnering with Cargas on is an integration between our food service point-of-sale system and Business Central,” she shared. “They’re developing a custom integration to connect that platform with Business Central.”