Workhorse Gives DL Foods the Control to Run £2.5M in Turnover With a Lean, One-Person Core

From a growing team back to a lean operation, without losing control

DL Foods is a UK-based B2B meat trading and broking business, supplying raw food products across human consumption, pet food, and international export markets. Working on a model similar to drop shipping, DL Foods buys stock directly from source and coordinates third-party transport straight to customers or short-term cold storage, never holding stock itself for long.

As the business scaled rapidly through a period of high demand, DL Foods grew from a single-operator setup into a busy team. But that growth came with a hidden cost: a reliance on fragmented spreadsheets that left the business exposed on stock tracking, margin management, and credit risk. With Workhorse, DL Foods built the operational visibility and automation needed not just to grow, but to later shrink back down to a lean, single-person core while still managing more than £2.5M in turnover.

The Challenge

As trade volumes surged and inventory sat across multiple public cold stores around the country, the cracks in DL Foods' spreadsheet-based systems started to show. Order logs, transport fees, sales margins, and profit splits were all tracked across linked spreadsheets, time-consuming to maintain and prone to human error, with real operational risk attached.

Because stock moved through third-party cold stores nationwide, the team often lacked real-time visibility into inventory levels, which meant unnecessary storage fees crept in unnoticed. Credit exposure was another blind spot: without real-time credit ceilings built into the ordering process, sales were occasionally booked over insured credit limits before finance had the chance to step in. On top of that, arranging haulage meant repeatedly copying and pasting addresses, contact numbers, pallet counts, and store opening times between systems and spreadsheets, labour-intensive and easy to get wrong.

“I can't be living on spreadsheets. It's too risky. As we were getting a team of people, it was good to have a track on the business and see transactions and stock live.”

Lee Dalziel, Founder, DL Foods

The Workhorse Solution

Workhorse worked closely with DL Foods to adapt its platform to the fast-moving, transaction-led nature of meat trading, tackling each blind spot in turn.

Unified Order and Margin Visibility

Workhorse brought CRM tracking, order processing, and accounting together in one place, integrating directly with Xero. Margins, purchase history, and order statuses became visible the moment an order was entered, giving DL Foods live margin management and instant profitability reporting instead of end-of-week spreadsheet reconciliation.

Custom Automated Logistics Workflows

To solve the haulage bottleneck, Workhorse built a tailored Transport Order PDF module directly within Purchase Orders. With one click, the system compiles collection and delivery addresses, pallet counts, opening hours, and haulage references, removing the repetitive copying and pasting that used to eat up hours and cause costly delivery mistakes.

Automated Credit Control and Guardrails

Workhorse introduced client credit limits directly into the order workflow. If a sales rep tries to enter an order that exceeds a customer's insured credit ceiling, the system flags it automatically, stopping unapproved debt before it happens rather than catching it after the fact.

Custom Management and Cash Flow KPIs

A tailored dashboard was built showing up to six months of historical performance alongside four weeks of forward predictions, so the management team can monitor billed versus predicted gross profit and spot revenue dips before they land.

Results and Future Readiness

When major post-Brexit trade shifts hit import volumes, DL Foods needed to adapt fast and cut overheads. The team tried running the business manually on spreadsheets for a single month, it proved far too labour-intensive and costly to sustain. Turning Workhorse back on gave DL Foods the leverage to operate with far greater efficiency, eliminating the need for a multi-person admin department and allowing a single operator to seamlessly handle £2.5M+ in turnover.

“The cost of having to do it manually was much higher than the cost of the subscription by miles. Workhorse didn't just give us scope to grow, it actually made it easier to run a smaller team far more efficiently.”

Lee Dalziel

Compliance became effortless too. Every import document, health certificate, packing list, and Proof of Delivery is attached directly to the relevant purchase or customer order, so audits from bodies like Defra and invoice discounting partners are completed cleanly and without stress. And because Workhorse acts as a single source of truth, onboarding new team members or commission agents now takes minutes rather than weeks, with customer order histories, commodity trends, and supplier records all a click away.

Conclusion

DL Foods' story shows that the right system doesn't just support growth, it gives a business the flexibility to scale down just as easily when conditions demand it, without losing control of margins, credit, or compliance. DL Foods continues to refine its Workhorse setup, drawing on ongoing support hours for fine adjustments and exploring Workhorse's predictive reordering and AI-driven reporting tools to stay ahead in a traditional industry.

“I would say to another business: take the plunge. The long-term benefit is that you will remove tedious work from your people. When new staff see the system, they're surprised by how clear and straightforward it is for a company of our size.”

Lee Dalziel, Founder, DL Foods