Wholesale Handler
The column no vendor publishes is the one that decides it: must the customer install anything to place an order. Five different products get called "app" on these pages, and three of the five are software a customer does not touch.
"App" names five different pieces of software
Fresho is the clearest case of the noun carrying no information. Fresho's marketing calls it "the free Fresho app", and Fresho's own supplier page lists "Web browser" as the operating system, because it is a web-based app reached in a browser. A supplier reading "app" on that page and "app" on Choco's page is reading two different products.
The platforms whose customers install nothing
Orderspace publishes no native app of any kind, buyer or rep, and names the missing rep app as the trade-off: an order written at a trade show is written in a mobile browser. Orderwerks repeats the claim on every industry page it publishes - "no app to install", "customers don't need to install anything" - and OrderEase states it as "no downloads or app installs required". Both of those two also publish an optional native buyer app, so the browser is their default rather than their only route.
Onsight's naming is the most useful in the field, because it splits the modules a supplier is choosing between and names each one: the B2B Sales Portal is the web route, the B2B Ecommerce App is the app-store route, and the sales rep app is a third product. A supplier can tell from the module name alone which one lands on a customer's phone.
The platforms where an app store is the way in
Way2Order states the model most plainly: buyer and seller use the same app, and the supplier's invitation carries an App Code the buyer types in to reach the catalogue. Choco documents no browser ordering route for buyers at all, so the download is the way in.
Upstock's homepage carries both answers at once. The body copy reads "Upstock works on all devices - nothing to download, install or update", while the footer of the same page links the Upstock buyer app on the App Store and Google Play. Ordermentum is the one that resolves itself in writing: its FAQ says venues may use the app or a browser, while suppliers are web-only.
A white-labelled app is your brand in the app store, and usually a higher tier
These are separate downloads, not themes. Produce Pro's publisher account carries Bix Produce Checkout, General Produce Co. Checkout, BFS Produce Checkout and Shapiro Produce App - one build per distributor. Cut+Dry's carries What Chefs Want, Fortune Fish and Gourmet, Driscoll Foods, Vitco Foodservice and The DiCarlo Food App. Pepper's branded build for Ferraro Foods reached more than 8,000 customers.A Pepper alternative for small suppliers covers who that scale of build is written for, and what a supplier with a dozen accounts gets instead.
A supplier's own logo on the icon changes nothing about the install. The customer still searches an app store, finds the supplier's name and taps Get, which is an extra ask landing on top of the ask to stock the product in the first place - How to approach shops or restaurants to stock your product covers that first conversation.
Rep apps and driver apps belong to your staff
BlueCart for Buyers and BlueCart – The Sales Rep App are two separate store listings, and Cut+Dry's Distributor Portal is a third listing beside its buyer app. Zoey, NuORDER and Onsight each publish a rep app too. Orderwerks builds its one native in Swift and Kotlin and holds 50,000 SKUs on the device, so a rep can write an order at a trade show with no signal.
Driver apps are a third population again: BlueCart, CyBake, FlexiBake, Produce Pro, SAAVI, Upstock, Orderlion, iNECTA and Zoey all list one, several of them as a paid add-on. Neither kind reaches a customer.
A platform's own app marketplace is one more thing that is not a customer download. Shopify's App Store sells extensions to the supplier running the store; a B2B buyer on Shopify signs in to a customer account in the online store, in a browser.
Wholesale Handler installs from the browser, with no app store
Wholesale Handler is a web app. A customer opens the portal in whatever browser is already on the till computer or the phone in their apron, and orders there. A customer who wants it to behave like an app uses "Add to Home Screen" in Safari on iPhone or "Install app" in Chrome on Android, after which it opens in its own window with its own icon and no browser frame around it. The same install is available to the supplier. Nobody visits an app store either way.
How customers, invitations and managed customers work covers how a customer comes to hold an account, and How storefronts work on Wholesale Handler covers the public page a buyer can find before they are a customer.
A customer who wants no software at all is still servable, because each customer is held in one of three modes. A fully managed customer receives nothing and the supplier places every order. A customer notified by email receives order and invoice email but holds no portal account. A self-managed customer signs in and orders themselves. An order keyed by the supplier from a phone call produces the same receipt emails as a customer-placed one, so a cafe that resists every screen is still a working account. How to get restaurant customers to order produce online instead of phoning covers moving one from the first mode to the third.
The Pro plan covers 50 customer accounts at a flat US$109 a month, so the number of cafes holding a portal account does not move the bill.
What the home-screen install does not do
- There is no Wholesale Handler listing in the App Store or Google Play. A customer who searches either store for it finds nothing, because the install starts in the browser.
- There is no white-labelled app under a supplier's own brand. The portal carries the supplier's name, products and prices, and the install is still the browser one.
- There is no multi-supplier buyer app, because a portal belongs to one supplier. A cafe buying from four suppliers who all run Wholesale Handler holds four portals, where a Choco or Ordermentum buyer reaches every supplier from one app.
- The installed web app needs a connection. BlueCart, Cut+Dry and Zoey each offer offline ordering that queues an order written with no signal; a Wholesale Handler order is priced against the live catalogue as it is placed, so the network has to be there at that moment.
