🍫 The energy-bar factory that scaled itself

For Hornby Organic, scaling meant a choice: hire an army of warehouse workers or find a smarter way to grow.

Hornby Organic’s revenue has multiplied twelve-fold after automating everything from bar-forming to palletizing.

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Here’s what you’ll learn: 

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Before it was stocked in grocery stores, Hornby Organic came from humble beginnings, just a couple in British Columbia making organic energy bars out of their home kitchen.

Success came fast. They moved into a small facility, hired staff, and launched a Shopify store. Demand exploded, but behind the scenes, chaos reigned. They were being stress tested, and the cracks were starting to show. Every batch demanded juggling ingredient tracking, managing health compliance, expiry dates, and order fulfillment. Their source of truth? Sticky notes and excel spreadsheets that were updated once a month. 

Those monthly inventories meant they were always guessing. As Canada’s first certified organic energy bar company, they were gambling their entire business on systems that were weeks behind reality. Accounting was up to date, but the inventory didn’t reflect it; they were flying blind.

As orders climbed, Hornby’s ops couldn’t keep up. They were overproducing some ingredients, underproducing others, and struggling to fulfill on time. A few more stockouts or missed deliveries, and their reputation, along with retailer relationships, were at risk of crumbling.

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Hornby’s founders faced a classic scaling trap, every solution seemed to create new problems. They were at an operational crossroads. Throw bodies at the problem or fix the underlying chaos. 

Their approach was methodical. Having identified their bottleneck; information flow, not production capacity, they started to look for solutions around 3 key priorities: traceability for regulatory compliance, seamless integration with the systems they did have, and real time data. 

 As an organic food processor, this was a non-negotiable. So they inverted the typical growth strategy. Instead of scaling inputs, they scaled intelligence. Implementing Katana, a manufacturing ERP built specifically for modern makers, that checked every box. It plugged directly into their Shopify storefront and accounting tools, handled the behind-the-scenes magic with automatic inventory updates, batch-level tracking, and real-time production scheduling. 

Basically, it turned chaos into clarity. No more guesswork.

For a small food brand, this kind of integration was a game-changer. It didn’t just make things easier, it made growth possible. Combined with warehouse robotics to strengthen automation, they were able to multiply their team’s effectiveness rather than multiply their team.

That clarity became a competitive advantage.

The numbers tell Hornby’s transformation story. Production output doubled. On-time fulfillment jumped 60%, shifting them from shaky vendor to trusted partner. Inventory waste dropped by 30%, which is critical when your primary inputs are perishable goods. Those margin improvements helped them maintain profitability and quality when inflation hammered freight and ingredient costs, leading competitors to squeeze prices and cut corners.

Even better, they now had full end-to-end visibility. Every oat, date, and almond could be tracked from order to oven to shelf. That gave them leverage with retailers, confidence in compliance, and unmatched piece of mind when making decisions. 

Hornby’s transformed their operations from a cost center to profit multiplier and built a machine that could handle whatever growth came next.

12x – Hornby’s revenue growth between 2017 and 2023, driven by automation across production and fulfillment.

100% – Overall improvement in production efficiency.

6 – The headcount Hornby’s maintained throughout it’s explosive growth. “Our approach has always been to have a smaller team and pay them above-average wages and enjoy the benefit of more long-term staff.” - Co-Founder Irah Vet

$9.2 Billion – The estimated size of the global organic snacks market this year. A compound annual growth rate of 7.5%.

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