Cook’s Direct Inc. is whipping up an e-commerce strategy that will position it to act as both a supplier of big mixers, freezers, refrigerators and other back-of-the-house products to restaurants, as well as a consultancy for fledgling eateries, says Ravi Rooprai, the company’s e-commerce manager.

And that strategy starts with rolling out new websites that aim to at drive B2B customers—namely restaurants, universities and government-operated correctional institutions—to buy online. The company, which began selling online in 2009 has three e-commerce sites: CooksDirect.com, which sells kitchen items to consumers and business; RestaurantSupplyPro.com, which sells large kitchen items to consumers and businesses; and CooksCorrectional.com, which sells restaurant supplies to prisons and other correctional institutions.

“We’re focusing in on B2B customers that are just starting out their business, or had their business running for only a year or so,” he says. “We want to walk them through the entire sales process.” Keeping the company’s online product information updated is one way Cook’s Direct can do this, Rooprai says.

In November 2015, the company switched from its CommerceV3 e-commerce platform to Magento Community Edition, a free open-source e-commerce technology platform from Magento Inc. Open-source software provides users with access to the core software code for customizing software functionality and features. Rooprai and a team of outside developers are building the new sites.

RestaurantSupplyPro is scheduled to relaunch at the end of February, and CooksDirect by the end of the third quarter. CooksCorrectional will launch on the new Magento platform by the end of the fourth quarter in 2016.

Rooprai says the new sites will reduce the number of clicks customers take to check out from about six to three. The revamped sites will also allow customers to build quotes online, rather than obtaining them by phone from customer service agents, as they do now. The Magento sites also will tie into the company’s Microsoft Dynamics enterprise resource planning, or ERP system, which the company uses to manage inventory and financial records, and its product information management systems. That will make it easier for the company’s marketing team to update product information for the 40,000 SKUs available across CooksDirect, RestaurantSupplyPro and CooksCorrectional.

Rooprai hopes these improvements will increase the company’s conversion rate of customers who visit the sites and eventually buy from about 1.9% today to more than 2.5% by the end of 2016.

Cook’s Direct has about 3,300 active customers across the United States, Mexico and Canada that range in size from individual consumers to mom-and-pop restaurants to government-operated correctional institutions.

Rooprai says B2B customers like restaurants, universities and prisons comprise about 28% of the CooksDirect client base, 33% of RestaurantSupplyPro customers, and all the CooksCorrectional customers. This year the company expects to generate $616,000 in combined B2B e-commerce sales from CooksDirect.com and RestaurantSupplyPro.com, which would be a 22% increase from $504,000 in 2015. Each site receives about 40,000 monthly unique visitors.

In 2015, CooksCorrectional.com generated about $600,000 in online sales, and received about 5,000 monthly unique visitors. Rooprai expects the same levels of sales and web visitors at CooksCorrectional this year. “That website is meant for the customers that we already have to reorder smaller parts like pots and pans and machinery for larger kitchen items,” Rooprai says.

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