f you’ve ever had a cup of coffee at a dinerin South Jersey, chances are you’ve had La-cas Coffee. A staple of the area since 1921,when it was started by brothers Constantine

and George Lacas, Pennsauken-based LacasCoffee’s niche for decades was diners. Whilemany area diners still carry the coveted brew,Lacas Coffee’s core market has expandedover time to accommodate a changing market-place, says new majority owner Jonathan DelRe. Though the coffee remains as memorableas ever, these changes to its business strategyhave brought new advances—and challenges—to the company.

The ChangesOne of the major changes Lacas Coffee hasfaced in recent years is new ownership. Del Retook over majority ownership of the companytwo years ago from members of the third gen-eration of the Lacas family and an unrelatedCEO. Since then, the company has acquired theDallis Bros. brand of specialty coffee, a staplein New York City for more than a century, andmore recently, the Philly Bean Coffee brand.

The company has also invested in a varietyof new capital equipment, including a third,higher capacity grinder and a new packaging

machine to enhance throughput and efficien-cy, and a new small-batch, solid drum roasterfor specialty coffee. The company has also re-freshed its branding and packaging and ex-panded from two locations to three.

“We’ve also invested heavily to build astronger online presence so we can sell direct-ly to home consumers,” Del Re adds. “The di-rect store delivery restaurant channel remainsa core focus for us, and something we prideourselves on doing very well, but it’s now a mi-nority of our business. The majority of our cof-fee volume goes through other channels.”

The ChallengesAs a successful company with new leadershipand an accelerated growth strategy, Lacas Cof-fee has faced a number of challenges in recentyears. One particular challenge was the fact thatits business management software, Sage, wasnot being used to its full potential. “Our enter-prise resource planning system (ERP) wasn’t re-ally being used properly,” Del Re says. “For ex-ample, one person would initiate production or-ders on their Outlook calendar, not within therobust ERP system we have. The result of work-ing outside of the ERP system was a number ofredundant processes and lots and lots of pa-

per, or said another way—inefficiency. We knewwe needed help with IT training, along with ad-ditional software.”

Such inefficiencies were hindering the La-cas team’s efforts and led the company to itsnext level of success.

The SolutionAfter working with several companies thatwere not able to fulfill their software needs, DelRe and Lacas Coffee turned to ACC Account-ing Solutions. Led by president and CEO SeanAtkins, ACC is a software consulting firm thatpartners with some of the most well-known busi-ness-related software names in the industry, andis a Sage-endorsed authorized partner.

Del Re says the staff at ACC actually tookthe time to listen to what their needs wereand spent time getting to know what thecompany does, so they could maximize theefficiency of their systems.

“ACC remained agnostic through the eval-uation process and helped us get to the answerthat was right for us,” Del Re says, noting thatthe evaluation process involved a hands-on ap-proach from ACC staff, who discussed LacasCoffee Company’s needs with management ina conference room, and at the desks of employ-ees throughout the organization, to get a fullunderstanding of how the company operatesand what would work best for their business.

ACC led Lacas Coffee through the success-ful implementation of a bill of materials process,which allows the company to better trackproduct costing in real-time. Calculating the truecost of numerous coffee SKU’s using excelsheets was yet another inefficiency to stream-line. The new business process utilizes LacasCoffee’s ERP system, providing the benefit ofaccurate, real-time information with less work.

Though this implementation required a sig-nificant time commitment from both ACCand Lacas Coffee, Del Re says ACC was very ac-commodating to Lacas Coffee’s needs.

With its initial challenges addressed, DelRe says Lacas Coffee will continue to lean onACC for their software expertise and as a busi-ness partner. “We’re not done yet. There’smuch more that we need to do over time,”he says, “and ACC is working with us throughthe process in a flexible way, instead of every-thing becoming an invoice with very littleguidance.” w

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Freshly BrewedACC Accounting Solutions helps Lacas Coffee

usher in a new era of business success.By Amanda Hamm Hengel

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