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Maple syrup has been at the center of Scott Zehr's life. As the founder of Maplewood Sweets, a third-generation maple farm in Watertown, New York, he and his family have poured generations of hard work into every bottle. "Our mission is to educate the world on the fact that maple syrup is more than a breakfast condiment," he says. "And along the way, share the story of who we are and what maple syrup is."
Like most small family farms, Scott started with a great product and a small customer base. As word started to spread, Scott knew that a great product alone wouldn't be enough to achieve his vision, he needed real sales help. Two years ago, he found that help through Jeff Mandigo, his brother-in-law! Jeff helped lead the charge into the grocery segment and since joining Local Line, business has exploded. Maplewood Sweets has gone from a beloved regional product to a staple on the shelves of 41 Tops Friendly Markets locations across New York State.
Before Maplewood Sweets was stocked in a single grocery store, Scott and Jeff knew their product needed to look the part.
"All the maple producers in the area are kind of doing the same thing," Jeff explains. "We all tap the trees, we get the sap, we make the syrup. Everybody makes a really great product. We excel at getting it to the customer.”
To stand out, they made a deliberate choice: no more plastic jugs. "We switched to all glass, all screen-printed bottles," Jeff says. "It really pops on a shelf." That upgrade signaled to retail buyers that Maplewood Sweets was serious, retail-ready, and built to sit alongside established brands without looking out of place.
The brand identity, though, goes deeper than the label. Every bottle carries a short paragraph explaining why Maplewood Sweets exists. Scott summarizes it simply: "To develop relationships based on integrity and help people become the best version of themselves." It's a philosophy as much as a mission statement, one that shapes how they approach every conversation, whether with a store manager or a customer reaching for a bottle off the shelf.
When they were ready to break into retail, the first thing they did was approach Tops Friendly Markets, a 150-store grocer with locations all across New York state. Jeff's approach to sales with Tops was straightforward: show up in person and lead with the product. "I started at the Tops closest to us, in Adams, New York," he says. "I brought them some samples and said, 'Hey, we're local. I'd love to sell this in your store.'" The store manager was immediately enthusiastic, connected Jeff with contacts at corporate, and made clear they wanted Maplewood Sweets on her shelves.
That introduction opened the door to Tops' buying team. When Tom Sulski, Category Manager for Natural and Organic at Tops, asked how many locations Maplewood Sweets wanted to supply, Jeff and Scott aimed higher than they expected to land. "We said, let's go for 20 and maybe we'll get 10," Jeff recalls. "Then they approved all 20. That was unexpected."
Soon after, the Maplewood Sweets team was onboarded to Local Line. This gave them the infrastructure they needed to manage orders, deliveries, and invoicing from multiple grocery store locations from day one.
With the platform in place, Jeff began working his way through the stores. His approach on the ground was just as deliberate as it had been at corporate. Before requesting to add any new location, he'd visit first, introduce himself, and make sure the interest was genuine. "That's done us a lot of favors," he says. It proved to be a good instinct. "When I go to a new store and talk to the manager, they say, 'Oh, local maple syrup? Absolutely we already have a spot for you.'"
Getting approved for 20 Tops locations is one thing. Managing orders, deliveries, and invoicing across all of them without a distributor or a back-office team is another.
That's where Local Line came in. Tops Markets uses Local Line to give local vendors a direct, efficient way to sell into their stores, cutting out the traditional distributor middleman. For a small operation like Maplewood Sweets, it removed a layer of complexity that could have easily become a barrier to growth.
"It's the platform I use for everything," Jeff says.
Through Local Line, Jeff can manage every Tops order in one place by tracking what's been ordered, what's been delivered, and what's owed, without chasing down paperwork or playing phone tag with store managers.
One of the features Jeff relies on most is the ability to manage everything from his phone, right on the store floor.
"I can go into a store, and while I'm standing right in front of our display, I can say, 'I need four of these,' and put it on the order immediately," he says. "There are no cheat sheets, no papers to remember, no going back to the office and trying to recall what you saw. It's all just right there."
Invoicing is equally seamless. When it's time to make a delivery, Jeff prints directly from his phone using a mobile printer, a process he estimates takes about two minutes per store. Across 41 locations, he figures Local Line saves him at least 10 minutes per stop. That adds up to almost 7 hours reclaimed every week, time that goes back into growing the business.
The impact runs deeper than the store floor. Scott's wife, Summer, who manages Maplewood Sweets' books and records, has become one of Local Line's biggest advocates.
"She loves the transparency," Scott says. "We know each week what invoices are going to be paid. We know when the money's coming. We're not invoicing 41 stores directly and chasing down 41 accounts receivable."
For a small family business where every dollar and every hour counts, that kind of predictability is hard to overstate. Cash flow visibility alone removes a layer of stress that many small producers quietly absorb as a cost of doing business. Instead of spending time tracking down payments, Scott and his wife can focus on what actually moves the needle.
Jeff, who manages invoicing through other systems for different retail accounts, has seen the contrast firsthand. "I do have some other stores I have to invoice through a different system, and it is more difficult," he says. "Local Line is certainly much more efficient."
The biggest structural advantage Local Line provides is the ability to sell directly into Tops, bypassing the distributor model entirely. Traditional retail distribution requires a supplier to first win over a distributor, then compete with thousands of other products in that distributor's catalog, hoping their brand doesn't get lost in the noise.
For a small producer, that model can be nearly impossible to crack. Local Line removes that layer, giving Maplewood Sweets direct access to the buyer and full control over how and when they deliver. The result is a level of agility that simply wouldn't exist otherwise. Pricing, delivery schedules, and retail relationships are all managed on their own terms, without a third party taking a cut or controlling the conversation.
"The scalability for a small business is just insane," Scott says. "How efficient it can be."
Technology is only as good as the people behind it, and for Maplewood Sweets, the support they've received from Local Line's team has been a defining part of the experience.
When Jeff ran into a hiccup on his first delivery, he emailed David from Local Line at 6:45 in the morning. "He responded within two minutes," Jeff says. "We've had correspondence on Sundays. I've never waited more than five minutes for a response." Over time, that responsiveness has built something that goes beyond a typical vendor relationship.
Scott sees it as an extension of his own business philosophy. "I have a view that B2B sales is really kind of a farce," he says. "It's P2P: person to person. Whether that's with Local Line or with store managers on the floor. People want to do business with people."
What started as 20 approved Tops locations has grown to 41, and Maplewood Sweets is nowhere near done.
Expanding into Rochester confirmed what Jeff had already come to believe. After visiting nine Tops locations in the area in a single day, every store expressed interest in carrying the product. The conversations reinforced not just the demand for Maplewood Sweets, but confidence in the platform behind it. "The response was amazing," he says. "Lots of great feedback about Local Line from them too. I can't agree more."
The Buffalo market is next. Tops has already requested that Maplewood Sweets be present at the grand opening of a new Young Street location in Buffalo, and the team is targeting 10 to 12 stores in the greater Buffalo area as part of that push.
Separately, an expansion into other retailers through Local Line is imminent, a direct result of the process and relationships Maplewood Sweets has built over the past two years.
Scott keeps the bigger picture in focus. "There are 150-some Tops locations," he says. "We view this as a stepping stone into something even bigger. We just have no intention of backing off the gas."
To learn how Local Line can help you streamline your wholesale operations and get your products on more shelves, book a demo with our team.
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