What shops ask before they say yes.
Straight answers, including the ones that talk you out of it. If your question is not here, ask it on the walkthrough and you will get the same kind of answer.
What does it cost?
$349 a month, or $3,490 paid yearly, which is two months free. Right now the first ten shops get a founding offer: pay yearly and there is no setup fee, and that yearly rate stays locked for as long as you run it. Pay monthly and setup is $750, half the usual price. After the ten, setup is $750 on the yearly plan and $1,500 on the monthly. There is no higher plan, and the number does not move with your volume.
Do you charge by the pound or by how much we run?
No. Some processing platforms meter you by throughput, which means the bill climbs in deer season and the fall beef rush, exactly when you are busiest and least interested in dealing with it. This is a flat rate. A heavy November costs the same as a slow February.
Why is there a setup fee?
Because somebody has to put your shop into the software: your cuts, your processing rates, your deli case, your brand, your staff accounts, the kiosk on your tablet and the label station at your scale. That is real work and I do it by hand rather than handing you an empty system and a help article. For the first ten shops that pay yearly, it is on me.
Is this a website or is it software?
Both, and that is the point. Your public site, the online store, and the deli counter are the front of the same system that runs the shop. When staff change a price at the counter it changes on the site. When a customer fills out a cut sheet online it lands on your board. There is no second system to keep in step, because there is not a second system.
We already have a website. Do we have to throw it out?
Not necessarily. It can go on a subdomain, something like orders.yourshop.com, so your existing site stays exactly where it is and nothing about your current arrangement has to change. Plenty of shops start that way. If you would rather the whole site came across, it gets rebuilt so it is fed by your real inventory and your real schedule instead of being a separate brochure somebody has to remember to update. You keep your name, your look, your photos and your domain either way.
Do our customers need an account?
No. A walk in can build a full cut sheet on the tablet at your counter with nothing but a name and a phone number. Custom processing customers get a private link the shop sends after the animal is weighed, so they fill out their sheet from the couch without signing up for anything.
What about the ones who will never use a computer?
Staff can do everything on their behalf. Enter the cut sheet, enter the weights, add the owner to the animal, take a pre order over the phone, generate the invoice. The online side is there for the customers who want it, not a requirement for the ones who do not.
Does it handle custom processing and retail at the same time?
That is the whole reason it exists. Custom exempt animals belonging to your customers and retail carcasses for your own counter live side by side, each tracked properly, each marked properly, and a counter sale traces back to the animal it came from.
Will it keep the records we are required to keep?
It keeps the record trail a processor is expected to have: the animal, the tag and kill numbers, live and hanging and take home weights, who owns each share with their name and address, the dates, and the not for sale marking where it belongs. It is built to hold your records, not to replace your inspector. Bring your state requirements to the walkthrough and we will look at them together.
Can it book kill days so we stop double booking?
Yes. You set your kill days and how many head of each animal you can take, and whoever answers the phone books it in the same place, with a live count everyone sees, so two people cannot sell the last spot. It moves a kill day for federal holidays, handles blackout dates like fair season, books a year or two out, and prints a kill sheet for the day. When the animal arrives, the booking becomes the animal record.
Can we send our customers a newsletter from it?
Yes. The people who sign up on your site or at checkout are already the list. You write it in the dashboard, see exactly how it will look, send yourself a test, then send it. Everyone gets their own unsubscribe link, and there is no separate email tool to pay for.
Can the site say our meat is USDA inspected or born and raised in the USA?
Yes, when it is true for what you sell. You tick it in your settings and the site says it on the home page, the about page, the questions page and in what search engines and AI assistants read about the shop. It is worded to what the USDA terms actually mean, and custom processed animals are described as not for sale, never as inspected.
Do we have to change how we take payment?
No. Pay at the counter works out of the box and most shops leave it exactly that way. Your register keeps ringing sales the way it does today and nothing here touches your card processing unless you ask it to. If you do want card online, for a deposit or for payment in full before pickup, Square and Stripe are both supported and you can switch it on or off whenever you like. If you are on something else, say so on the call and I will price it honestly or tell you it is not worth doing.
Do we have to replace our register?
No, and most shops should not. This is not a register and it does not want to be. It replaces your spreadsheets, your paper cut sheets and a good share of your phone. Your counter keeps ringing sales the way it does today.
Do you come out to the shop?
Only if you want me to, and it is quoted separately. Setup and training are done over a screen share, which sounds like a shortcut and is not: everything is already loaded before we sit down, and we do as many sessions as it takes rather than one rushed afternoon while you are trying to run the shop. If you would rather have somebody in the building, say so on the call and I will price it against the drive. Nobody needs it to get running.
Who takes the product photos?
You can go live without a single one. The case shows the cut and the price with or without a picture, so photos never hold up your opening. When you want them, send phone pictures against a shot list I give you. They are your cuts and they look better out of your own case than bought from a stock library. If you would rather not deal with it, I can come and shoot them for an additional charge.
How long does it take to get running?
The software is already built and already running a real shop, so there is nothing to invent. The work is getting your shop into it: your cuts, your prices, your deli case, your brand. That is measured in days, not the many months a custom build takes.
Is there a contract?
No. Give thirty days when you want to stop. Setup you have already paid is not refundable because the work is done by then, but nothing locks you in after that.
Who owns our data?
You do, and you can export it. The shop runs on its own database under your own account, not a shared pool where your customer list sits next to a competitor's.
Who is behind it?
One person who writes all of it, out of Vienna, Missouri. That is the tradeoff worth being straight about: you will never sit in a support queue, and you are not buying from a company with a floor of engineers. The software already runs a real shop day to day, which is the part that matters most.