Trust the number on the screen. Ship the freshest stock, every time.
The count on paper never matches the shelf. You promise product that is not there, and someone finds a pallet of expired cases at the back. UK food and drink businesses bin 12% of their fresh stock every year, and more than half of that loss is created inside their own four walls. Real-time stock you can trust, true FEFO by design and an end to overselling will stop the daily firefighting.
Achieve every one of these with Infios WMS and ProFresh, delivered in the UK by Balloon One.
One change does the work: capture stock at the moment it moves, rather than writing it down at the end of a shift. Balloon One built the FEFO, expiry-control and ProFresh modules that UK food and drink operations run on.
Scan-verified at every move
Receipt, put-away, pick and despatch confirmed by scan. The record updates as stock moves, so it never drifts from the shelf.
Sell only what exists
True available-to-promise keeps on-hand, allocated and committed stock distinct. Every order you confirm is backed by real stock.
FEFO enforced by the system
Soonest-to-expire is directed out first, automatically. Freshness stops depending on who is on shift.
Waste driven down to Albion levels
ProFresh handles fresh produce as it actually behaves. Albion Fine Foods runs under 3% waste on it.
Delivered by Balloon One, exclusive UK partner for Infios WMS since 2005 and a SAP Business One Gold Partner.
The count says one thing. The shelf says another. And you're the one who has to make it right.
Every stockout fire-drill, every apology call to a customer, every write-off of stock that expired at the back traces to one thing: you cannot trust your own numbers. The wasted hours are the cheapest part. It costs you the customer you let down, the margin you burned, and your own standing as the person who is meant to have the stock under control.
The count never matches
Paper says one figure, the shelf holds another. Every promise you make rests on a number you already doubt.
You've oversold again
You committed stock that wasn't physically there. That is an apology, a short delivery, and a customer who now questions whether you are reliable.
Expired cases at the back
Without enforced FEFO, older stock hides behind newer. You find it as a write-off, never before. That is where 7% of your fresh stock goes every year.
SKU sprawl
Every new line makes the last count harder. Thousands of items, and no real logic to where any of them sit.
Your team is not careless. Stock gets recorded after the fact (end of shift, on paper, from memory) instead of at the moment it is received, moved or picked. The gap between the count and the shelf is the gap between when stock moved and when someone wrote it down. Close that gap and all four problems go together.
Balloon One's Out of Date research found UK food and beverage businesses lose 12% of their fresh or perishable stock annually, and 7% of that comes straight from internal issues: over-ordering, poor stock rotation and handling errors. It works out at £156,599 per business, every year. Outdated technology (37%) and disconnected systems (33%) are the causes managers name most.
Out of Date · Balloon One research into the UK F&B supply chainWhat it feels like when you can finally trust the number.
Less counting, not more. The record is built by the work itself, as it happens, so the figure on the screen is the stock on the shelf. You promise with confidence and you hit it.
The screen is the shelf
Stock updates in real time as it's scanned, so the number you promise against is the number that's genuinely there.
You stop overselling
True available-to-promise shows only what is free to sell. A commitment becomes a commitment.
FEFO runs itself
The system directs the soonest-to-expire stock to be picked first, automatically. Freshness stops being a memory test.
Thousands of SKUs, in order
Every item has a logical home. Counts get faster as you grow, not slower, and finding stock stops being a hunt.
Food and drink businesses like yours already trust the number.
Balloon One has been the exclusive UK partner for Infios WMS (formerly Körber, formerly HighJump) since 2005, and we built the food-specific FEFO, expiry-control and ProFresh capabilities that make accuracy and freshness work the way this industry needs. At Wing Yip, weekly stock checks are now consistently accurate, with better traceability and more streamlined processes, which is the exact outcome this page is about.
Fine Foods
Albion Fine Foods
Fresh produce is the hardest stock in the building: high line counts, small quantities, daily reordering and days of shelf life. Balloon One built ProFresh with Albion's team around how fresh produce actually moves: visual identification, automatic unit-of-measure conversion, optimised picking and live visibility of excess stock.
Wing Yip
The UK's largest oriental grocer. Weekly stock checks are now consistently accurate, with better traceability and more streamlined processes.
Classic Fine Foods
Fresh, frozen and pastry products to the world's best restaurants and hotels, with multi-temperature stock accuracy at the core of the operation.
Birchall Foodservice
A national foodservice operator running ambient, chilled and frozen, with full warehouse transparency across thousands of lines.
Huel
One of the UK's fastest-growing food and drink brands. Infios WMS was brought in to support in-house warehousing through a global expansion strategy.
Capture stock the moment it moves. The count and the shelf stop drifting apart.
The fix is to record every receipt, put-away, pick and despatch as it happens, scanned and verified, so the system reflects reality instead of yesterday's paperwork. That's exactly what a warehouse management system does. We deliver Infios WMS in the UK, with food-and-drink modules we've built on top of it over 20 years: true FEFO and expiry control, demand forecasting for perishables, and scanner-guided tasks. Here's how it answers each of your questions in turn.
“Why doesn't the count on paper ever match what's actually on the shelf?”
Paper is always a step behind. Scan-verify every move as it happens and the record stops lagging reality.
Infios WMS, delivered by Balloon One, verifies stock by scan at every stage: receipt, put-away, pick and despatch. Because the record updates the instant stock actually moves, rather than at the end of a shift, the figure on the screen and the stock on the shelf stay in step. Cycle counts become a quick confirmation instead of a full reconciliation, and the daily "where did that stock go?" investigation quietly disappears.
- Scanner-verified at every moveReceipt, put-away, pick and despatch all confirmed by scan, so nothing is recorded from memory.
- Real-time stock recordThe system updates as stock moves. No end-of-day catch-up, no drift between count and shelf.
- Faster, lighter countsCycle counting confirms an accurate picture rather than rebuilding one from scratch.
“We keep promising product we don't actually have on hand. How do others prevent this?”
By selling against true available-to-promise, not a stale figure, so a commitment is always backed by real stock.
Overselling happens because the number you promise against is not the number that is free to sell. Infios shows true available-to-promise: allocated, committed and on-hand stock kept distinct, so when you confirm an order, the stock behind it genuinely exists. That means fewer short deliveries, fewer apology calls, and a customer relationship built on orders you actually fulfil.
- True available-to-promiseOn-hand, allocated and committed stock kept separate, so you only sell what's truly free.
- Fewer short deliveriesCommitments are backed by real stock — not an optimistic figure from an old count.
- Confidence to promiseSay yes to the order knowing the stock is there to honour it.
“How do we ship the soonest-to-expire stock first, instead of finding expired cases in the back?”
Let the system decide the pick. True FEFO directs the shortest-life stock out first, so freshness stops depending on who's picking.
Balloon One's FEFO and expiry-control modules, built on Infios, direct pickers to the soonest-to-expire stock automatically, so the oldest date always leaves first, by design rather than by discipline. Stock approaching its use-by is flagged before it becomes a problem, not discovered as a write-off. The result is less waste, fresher deliveries to your customers, and no more nasty surprises at the back of the chiller.
- Automated FEFO pickingThe system routes the shortest-life stock out first, every time. No manual date-checking.
- Expiry alertsShort-dated stock is flagged early, so it's used or moved before it's lost.
- Less waste, fresher despatchCustomers receive longer-life stock and you write off far less.
“We keep adding SKUs and it's getting unmanageable. How do bigger operations organise thousands of items?”
With slotting. Give every item a logical home based on how it actually moves, and scale stops meaning chaos.
As the range grows, "everyone knows roughly where it lives" stops working. Infios uses slotting to give every SKU a defined location based on how fast it moves, its temperature regime and its size, so pickers walk less, stock is easier to find and count, and adding lines doesn't add disorder. It's how larger operations run thousands of SKUs without the warehouse becoming a memory game.
- Logical slottingEvery SKU has a defined home based on velocity, temperature and size, not habit.
- Faster picking & countingLess walking, easier finds, and counts that stay quick as the range grows.
- Scales with the rangeAdding SKUs becomes a configuration, not a fresh headache for the team.
The things you're actually wondering.
Why doesn't the count on paper ever match what's actually on the shelf?
Paper records what happened after it happened, at the end of a shift, from memory. Infios WMS captures every receipt, put-away, pick and despatch by scan, as it happens, so the record reflects reality in real time. The gap between count and shelf is really the gap between when stock moved and when someone wrote it down, and that's the gap this closes.
We keep promising product we don't actually have on hand. How do others prevent this?
By selling against true available-to-promise rather than a stale on-hand figure. Infios keeps on-hand, allocated and committed stock distinct, so when you confirm an order the stock behind it genuinely exists. That's what turns overselling and short deliveries into commitments you reliably hit.
How do we make sure we ship the soonest-to-expire stock first instead of finding expired cases in the back?
Balloon One's FEFO and expiry-control modules, built on Infios, direct pickers to the shortest-life stock automatically, so the oldest date always leaves first by design. Short-dated stock is flagged early, before it becomes a write-off, which means less waste and fresher deliveries to your customers.
We keep adding SKUs and it's getting unmanageable. How do bigger operations organise thousands of items?
With slotting. Infios gives every SKU a logical home based on how fast it moves, its temperature regime and its size, so pickers walk less and counts stay fast as the range grows. It's how larger operations run thousands of lines without the warehouse turning into a memory game.
Do we have to replace all our systems at once?
No. We deliver in a phased way, and Infios is built to integrate with what you already run. Balloon One is a SAP Business One Gold Partner with strong EDI and systems-integration experience, so the WMS sits alongside your ERP, finance and customer systems rather than forcing a rip-and-replace.
Will this work across ambient, chilled and frozen?
Yes. Mixed-temperature operations are exactly what the food modules are built for, with FEFO and expiry rules and slotting configured per zone. Several of our clients run all three regimes into the major UK retailers and foodservice wholesalers on this platform.
Get the operations best-practice whitepaper.
Our free whitepaper for UK food and drink distributors on optimising storage, slotting and picking, the groundwork behind real-time accuracy, true FEFO and organising thousands of SKUs. Written from 20 years of doing exactly this, not from theory.
- Slotting by velocity: locate items by how fast they move
- Slotting by fit: maximise cube utilisation per location
- Balance zones: spread velocity evenly across the pick face
- Bulk-pick slotting: aggregate smaller units into bulk picks
Prefer to talk it through your own operation? Book a short stock-accuracy call and we'll walk your specific pain points. No obligation, and we'll tell you plainly whether a WMS is the right fix.
Food & Drink Distributors: Best Practices
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