How Qualifirst cut $300,000 in annual development costs and took control of their internal tooling

Qualifirst is a national specialty food company that runs on operational precision. Over two decades, the company accumulated a patchwork of spreadsheets, Salesforce workflows, procurement tools, and custom development. Each system promised flexibility, but in practice, they created bottlenecks.

Procurement software could not handle niche, low-volume gourmet products. Salesforce required deep customization just to answer basic operational questions. Custom development became a black box that was expensive, slow, and difficult to iterate on.

As Jodi MacKinnon put it, every tool came with someone else’s assumptions baked in.

Qualifirst needed a way to build internal tools that matched how their business actually worked, without hiring more developers or gambling on fragile AI builders.

After testing more than ten internal app builders and AI tools, UI Bakery stood out immediately.

Not because of the UI components, but because it could connect to Qualifirst’s real data in minutes.

“UI Bakery is ChatGPT, but an architect. You talk to it, and it builds a visual system right in front of you.”

With UI Bakery, Qualifirst could:

• Connect directly to existing databases, APIs, and services
• Transform and shape data freely, without rigid templates
• Build production-ready internal apps without waiting on engineering
• Self-host for security, control, and governance

This aligned perfectly with Qualifirst’s needs as a semi-technical operations team that understands systems, but does not want to write or maintain code.

What they built

From spreadsheets to production systems in hours - in just weeks, Qualifirst replaced critical workflows with UI Bakery apps that now power daily operations.

Procurement system

A custom procurement tool built to handle niche, low-volume gourmet products that off-the-shelf software could not model correctly.

Delivery & logistics app

A delivery system built in minutes that tracks drivers, optimizes routes, captures signatures, and syncs directly into the ERP.

Marketing asset pipeline

A fully automated product photography workflow:

• Photos taken on a phone
• Uploaded to Google Drive
• Processed automatically for background removal
• OCR detects product identity and SKU
• Assets are renamed and uploaded to ImageKit
• Output is Amazon-ready, white-background imagery

Internal project planner

A project management system that understands project status, tasks, and timelines and can answer questions in meetings. None of these tools existed in the market in this form. Qualifirst built them internally, without writing code.

Built once. Trusted in production.

The initial wow came from AI-assisted building. The long-term value came from reliability.

UI Bakery became the place where Qualifirst exposes problems, inspects APIs, debugs workflows, and iterates in real time, instead of waiting weeks for developer feedback.

“If something breaks, I just expose it. There’s no black box. You can see exactly what’s happening.”

As adoption grew, Qualifirst moved to a self-hosted deployment with Solar Drive, reinforcing security, governance, and control. The hosting setup was completed in hours, not weeks.

UI Bakery is now core infrastructure at Qualifirst.

• Dozens of internal apps built in hours instead of weeks
• Significant reduction in SaaS sprawl by replacing single-purpose tools
• Less reliance on custom development and external engineers
• Clear operational visibility across procurement, logistics, marketing, and projects
  

Projected ROI:

“We expect to save at least $300,000 in 2026,” said Jodi MacKinnon, President of Qualifirst.

At its peak, Qualifirst spent nearly $700,000 per year on development. UI Bakery shifted that spend from maintenance to momentum.