Kaizntree AI Ops Assistant
About Actual Veggies
Founded in 2020, Actual Veggies set out to make plant-based food taste like real food again. Their chef-crafted burgers and fries are made from actual vegetables, no fillers, no weird additives, just clean ingredients. The brand’s commitment to flavor and quality quickly earned them placement in major retailers, including Wegmans, Kroger, and Erewhon, as well as a presence in restaurants like PLNT Burger. Their strong e-commerce operation and consistent brand storytelling have helped build a loyal consumer base.
As growth picked up, so did the operational challenges. What started with just four SKUs has expanded into nearly thirty, and instead of receiving one or two purchase orders a week, the team now handles over seventy. The POs also come with more data to input and reconcile, and the manual process of typing them line by line into Google Sheets was consuming over 20 hours a month from their operations analyst. With every additional PO, the risk of mistakes grew: incorrect MOQs, mismatched SKUs, and delays with distributors all became more common. It was clear that if Actual Veggies wanted to continue scaling, this process would need to change.
The Challenge
Automating POs without Changing Systems
Like many CPG brands, Actual Veggies relies heavily on Google Sheets. Even with an ERP in place, the real day-to-day decisions (allocating orders, checking inventory, managing logistics) happens in spreadsheets. Over time, these sheets became large, complex, and fragile. The team was spending roughly five hours each week copying and pasting purchase order data from SPS Commerce into multiple tabs, slowing operations and pulling attention away from strategic work.
"The manual issues would just keep compounding. What we needed was a better process - and JP gave us that without adding headcount."
Alex Swartz
Co-founder & COO of Actual Veggies
Hiring another analyst might have reduced the burden in the short term, but it wouldn’t have fixed the root problem. More volume and more SKUs would just create more opportunities for error. They needed something that could scale alongside the business and not add more manual steps; It was important for the solution to fit into their existing systems without requiring any migrations.
That’s when Actual Veggies turned to Kaizntree.
The Solution
Leveraging AI to Automate Existing PO Workflows
Kaizntree’s AI Agent (JP) now automates the transfer of purchase order data from SPS Commerce directly into their Google Sheets, matching the exact format of their existing workflows. What used to take four or five minutes per PO now happens instantly, and JP doesn’t just move the data: it validates it, flags potential mistakes, and reconciles mismatched SKUs before they cause problems down the line. In essence, JP functions as their digital employee that does the grunt work so Actual Veggies doesn’t have to.
This automation removed the risk of human error and gave Actual Veggie’s team back more than 20 hours each month. Their analyst, Bless, now spends her time on quality assurance, certification compliance, and ensuring the brand is ready for audits.
“It’s not just about saving time. It’s about letting our Operations Analyst focus on QA, certificates, and compliance, the things that really impact our ability to scale safely.”
Alex Swartz
Co-founder & COO of Actual Veggies
The Takeaway
Delegate your "Busy Work" to AI
Growth doesn’t just bring bigger sales orders, it brings bigger operational headaches and lots of “busy work”. For most brands, the default reaction is to add another analyst or coordinator to keep up. But more headcount often just means more people wrestling with the same clunky spreadsheets and workflows. What Actual Veggies’ experience shows is that the smarter move is to automate the process itself.
By introducing Kaizntree's AI Assistant, the team was able to prevent operations from becoming a growth ceiling. Instead of scaling their headcount in parallel with sales, they built a system that scales their team’s capacity through automation. That shift not only freed up 20+ hours a month but also redirected talent toward the kinds of responsibilities that actually strengthen the business long-term.
“This is a simple, affordable way for non-technical founders to start using AI. You don’t need to build something complicated to see real impact.”
Alex Swartz
Co-founder & COO of Actual Veggies
The lesson is simple: waiting until you’re drowning in POs makes change harder. For growing CPG brands, small steps into AI and automation can deliver an outsized impact quickly, without the need for massive overhauls or technical expertise. Now Actual Veggies has time to focus on matters most: making sure the world never runs out of veggie burgers.
