---
title: An Open Pantry alternative for wholesale butchers
Metadescription: Open Pantry gives its free tier unlimited orders, then caps orders on the plans that add invoicing. Wholesale Handler includes everything on every plan.
author: Dan Edwards
author_role: Founder
author_url: https://danedwardsdeveloper.com
author_linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-edwards-developer
published: 2026-08-26
updated: 2026-09-27
---

Token estimate: ~2,300

# An Open Pantry alternative for wholesale butchers

Open Pantry gives its free tier unlimited customers and unlimited orders, and no way to invoice any of them. Invoicing and per-customer price lists start on Pro, which is also where an order ceiling appears that the free plan did not have, stepping up in bands until the price stops being published. Wholesale Handler is [a flat fee](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/flat-fee-wholesale-ordering-software) with everything in it on a flat monthly fee, so the bill for a butcher taking thirty orders a week is the same as the bill for a butcher taking three hundred.

By **[Dan Edwards](https://wholesalehandler.com/about)**, Founder.

## Open Pantry prices Pro by how many orders you take

The supplier pricing page carries three tiers - a free plan, Pro with a 14-day trial and no card required, and a custom-priced Enterprise. Open Pantry states it takes no percentage of order value.

Pro is sold in volume bands. Pro Lite covers up to 100 orders a month at US$99 (source) - £74 | €87 | CA$141 | A$143 | NZ$175, Pro Standard up to 500 at US$199 (source) - £149 | €175 | CA$283 | A$287 | NZ$352, and above 500 orders the tier is Enterprise, with no published price. So a butcher can read the cost of the first five hundred orders a month and has to ask about anything past that.

Those are the figures on the US page. Open Pantry serves a different set outside it, and does not say in what currency. A British visitor is redirected to Open Pantry's own UK page, where both bands carry a bare dollar sign and read roughly half again the US numbers - which fits Australian dollars and does not fit pounds. The redirect is deliberate rather than a fault, because the US page points a British visitor at it. So a butcher in Britain is shown a price on a British page with no way to tell what it means.

## Invoicing and price lists sit above Open Pantry's free tier

The free plan is a real free plan and not a trial. It covers listing the full product range, unlimited customers, unlimited purchase orders, automatic order reminders and pick slips.

What it cannot do is bill for any of it. Invoicing and credit notes, unlimited price lists and price exceptions, inventory with lots and expiry dates, accounting integrations, delivery runs with driver navigation, staff sign-ins with role permissions and margin reporting are all Pro. White-label branding on a custom domain, ERP integration and the AI that converts email and SMS orders are Enterprise.

Paying reverses both halves of that. Pro adds the invoicing and the price lists, and brings a ceiling the free plan did not have: Pro Lite stops at 100 orders a month, or about twenty-three a week. A butcher with forty accounts ordering weekly is past it immediately, and on Pro Standard at US$199 (source) - £149 | €175 | CA$283 | A$287 | NZ$352 a month.

A butcher with more than 3 accounts who needs a product list, orders in one place and a pick slip to work from, and who raises invoices somewhere else already, has what they need on the free tier. Wholesale Handler's free plan stops at 3 customers. What decides it is whether the per-customer prices and the invoicing sit in the same place as the orders.

Per-customer pricing is the one that matters soonest for a butcher, because a gastropub, a burger chain buying by the case and a farm shop taking two boxes a week rarely sit on the same sheet. [Charging different prices to different wholesale customers](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/how-to-charge-different-prices-to-different-wholesale-customers) covers how the price lists behind that work.

## Wholesale Handler charges one fee that does not move with order count

Three plans, no per-order fee, no transaction fee, no commission on order value and no per-user charge. They differ only in how many customers you trade with, and everything the product does is on all of them - including the free one. Up to 10 team members can work in the same business, each with their own sign-in over the same orders and invoices, and none of them adds to the bill. Open Pantry puts that behind Pro.

That includes the customer portal customers order through at any hour, standing orders on a weekly to four-weekly cadence, order profiles that carry delivery days, ordering cutoffs, maximum lead time, minimum spend and delivery charges per customer, named price lists assigned per customer, a production schedule built from incoming orders, PDF packing slips and invoices, payment tracking, a CSV export of invoice line items for accounting software, spreadsheet import of an existing customer and product book, and an optional public storefront page.

| Cost shape | Open Pantry | Wholesale Handler |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Unlimited customers and orders, no invoicing | 3 customers, every feature |
| Paid entry price | US$99 (source) - £74 \| €87 \| CA$141 \| A$143 \| NZ$175 a month, 100 orders | A flat monthly fee, orders uncapped |
| What moves the bill | Monthly order count, in bands at 100 and 500 | Nothing |
| Commission on order value | None | None |
| Invoicing | Pro tier | Included |
| Per-customer price lists | Pro tier | Included |

## What Wholesale Handler does not do

Open Pantry's Pro and Enterprise tiers carry several things with no Wholesale Handler counterpart, and a butcher who needs one of them is better served there:

-   Delivery runs and driver navigation. Wholesale Handler produces packing slips and a production schedule, not a routed van.
-   Inventory with lots and expiry dates. Wholesale Handler tracks an optional stock quantity per product and no batch record.
-   Credit notes, vendor bills and invoice matching.
-   Live accounting integration. Wholesale Handler exports invoice line items as a CSV shaped for import instead, which is the trade covered in [wholesale ordering software without ERP integration](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/wholesale-ordering-software-without-erp-integration).

## Neither product brings a butcher new customers

Open Pantry is not a marketplace, despite the buyer-facing app. There is no supplier directory and no discovery surface: a venue gets in by invitation from a supplier it already buys from, and Open Pantry's own restaurant page tells a chef whose supplier is not on the platform to "ask your supplier to join". Its supplier pages say the same thing from the other side - "your customers only see you, not your competitors".

The genuine buyer-side difference is consolidation. A chef already ordering from four suppliers on Open Pantry adds a fifth to the same app and the same weekly routine, while a Wholesale Handler portal is a separate sign-in from whatever else that kitchen uses. That is a real convenience for the buyer, and Wholesale Handler has no answer to it. It is not a source of new trade - both products are ways to run the accounts a butcher already has, and [what a wholesale customer portal is](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/wholesale-customer-portal) covers what that surface does and does not do.

## Q&A

**Q: Is Open Pantry free for suppliers?**
A: There is a genuine free tier that lets a supplier list their full product range and receive unlimited purchase orders from unlimited customers. Invoicing, per-customer price lists, inventory, accounting integrations and delivery tools all require the paid Pro plan.

**Q: Does Open Pantry take a cut of order value?**
A: No. Open Pantry states it takes no percentage of order value. Its paid plans are instead banded by how many orders a supplier takes in a month, so the bill steps up at the band boundaries. Wholesale Handler charges a flat monthly fee with no per-order or transaction fee and no band.

**Q: Can a restaurant find new butchers on Open Pantry?**
A: No. Open Pantry has no supplier directory or discovery feature. A venue joins when one of its existing suppliers invites it, and a chef whose supplier is not on the platform is told to ask that supplier to join.

**Q: Does Wholesale Handler handle delivery routing?**
A: No. It produces a production schedule from incoming orders and PDF packing slips per delivery, but it does not plan a van route or navigate a driver. Open Pantry's Pro tier includes delivery runs and driver navigation.

**Q: Can I see Wholesale Handler before paying?**
A: Yes. The demo opens on a working account already stocked with products, customers, orders and invoices, with no email address, no card and nothing to install. A toggle switches between the wholesaler's view and a customer's view over the same data. Signing up turns that account into a real one and everything built during the demo stays where it is.