Freshket’s Ground-Up FoodTech is Fixing Thailand’s Supply Chain

Freshket is a FoodTech company purpose-built to bring structure to Thailand’s disjointed fresh food supply chain. It combines digital systems with physical infrastructure to manage sourcing, quality control, warehousing and delivery, reducing waste and improving reliability for both farmers and buyers.

Ponglada Paniangwet, co-founder, is the CEO of Freshket. Raised in a farming household and later involved directly in food distribution, she saw firsthand where the system fell short. That experience led her to build a solution grounded not in digital convenience, but in operational clarity.

Starting with the Realities of the Market

Before Freshket was a tech-enabled supply chain, it was a small food-processing business. Ponglada Paniangwet, also known as Bell, and a friend would buy produce wholesale, process it overnight, and deliver to restaurants before sunrise. At first, this was manageable. But the cracks appeared quickly. Restaurants were calling at all hours to change orders. Markets opened late. Prices fluctuated with no warning. Deliveries got delayed due to traffic, staffing gaps or spoilage.

Bell understood that these problems weren’t due to bad actors. They were the byproduct of a system without structure. Wholesale vendors did their best but couldn’t guarantee quality. Farmers had no access to real demand signals. Restaurants wanted reliability but were forced to shop daily, dealing with over a dozen suppliers at a time.

Freshket’s first model was a digital marketplace that aimed to connect restaurants with suppliers. In theory, it made sense. But in practice, restaurants didn’t want the hassle of managing multiple unknown vendors. They wanted one point of contact and the assurance that deliveries would arrive on time and in good condition.

Within a few months, Bell and her co-founders made a decision that would define Freshket’s trajectory. Instead of acting as a connector, they took ownership of the supply chain itself.

Taking Control of the Infrastructure

Freshket moved away from a marketplace model and adopted a managed service approach. It began sourcing directly from a smaller, trusted group of suppliers, secured warehouse space for staging and quality control, and invested in refrigerated logistics to handle perishable goods with greater efficiency.

Rather than offering endless variety, Freshket prioritized consistency. It cut its vendor base from more than 100 to fewer than 40. This allowed the company to enforce standards, track stock with greater accuracy and deliver a consistent experience to buyers.

Warehousing became the core. Every item goes through a structured intake process where quality is checked before packaging. Deliveries are scheduled based on order priority and kitchen opening times. On the backend, Freshket built its own systems for managing inventory, routing and invoicing. It wasn’t flashy, but it worked.

Bell emphasizes that building this layer of operations was necessary for any kind of digital layer to function properly. “Technology doesn’t solve broken operations,” she says. “You fix the system, then layer technology on top.”

Responding to Crisis with Clarity

When COVID-19 disrupted the Thai food and hospitality sector, Freshket’s service was hit hard. Most restaurant orders vanished overnight. Rather than pause operations, Bell and her team made a quick pivot to retail customers. The same logistics that supported bulk deliveries to restaurants were redirected to serve households looking for safe access to produce.

Freshket already had pricing models, vendor relationships and distribution capacity in place. The only shift required was adapting order sizes and reconfiguring delivery routes. Within 48 hours of the lockdowns, the company was serving households across Bangkok.

This shift did more than keep the company afloat. It allowed Freshket to showcase its operational strength to potential investors at a time when many startups were faltering. It also expanded public awareness of the brand, creating a retail presence that would later serve as a useful secondary channel even after restaurant demand returned.

Bell credits this rapid response to the company’s internal readiness. “If we didn’t own our systems,” she says, “we couldn’t have made that move so quickly.”

Designing for Future Utility, Not Just Scale

Today, Freshket delivers to more than 25,000 restaurants and processes over 10,000 product SKUs. The company handles procurement, warehousing, quality control, and delivery, using internally developed tools to manage the entire operation.

Yet scale is not the company’s main concern. Bell is focused instead on building out data infrastructure that will support long-term decision-making. Predictive inventory models, dynamic pricing, demand forecasting and farmer advisory tools are all on the roadmap. The aim is not to become a data company, but to use data to make each delivery more precise.

This is especially important on the supplier side. Many of the farmers Freshket works with lack access to tools that could help them optimize what they plant, how they harvest and when they sell. Freshket’s visibility into real restaurant demand puts it in a unique position to guide these decisions, not as a top-down directive, but through shared planning.

Bell’s focus remains pragmatic. She wants systems that cut spoilage, reduce gaps and bring predictability to both ends of the chain. While Freshket continues to explore geographic expansion, its core model remains based on tight execution.

She doesn’t talk about revolution or disruption. Her language is closer to that of a seasoned operator than a pitch-deck founder. In her view, credibility is earned not by declaring intentions but by fulfilling them every day.

A FoodTech Company Built on Operational Depth

While many food-focused startups enter the market by focusing on front-end experiences, Freshket has always been a back-end business. It is, by design, an infrastructure company, one that happens to touch food.

In that sense, Freshket aligns more closely with traditional supply chain models than consumer tech. It offers reliability, clarity and volume management, not food discovery or culinary storytelling. This has made it a preferred partner for restaurants that value consistency over novelty.

The company’s model is built on three principles: manage fewer suppliers more effectively, use warehousing as a control point rather than a storage space, and ensure delivery is treated as a service, not just a final step.

Bell is clear that Freshket’s role is not to replace anyone in the ecosystem, but to make the existing food supply system work more efficiently for everyone involved.

When asked what she believes has made the difference, her answer is simple. “We chose to deal with the parts that are hard to fix, warehousing, logistics, farmer coordination. Most others avoid these. But that’s where the real value is created.”

We chose to deal with the parts that are hard to fix, warehousing, logistics, farmer coordination. Most others avoid these. But that’s where the real value is created.”

Freshket is structured, measured and focused. Bell believes the food industry doesn’t need big promises. It needs systems that work and leaders who understand where those systems break down.

As Freshket expands, it offers a practical example of how FoodTech can operate when built around function, reliability, and long-term utility.

We chose to deal with the parts that are hard to fix, warehousing, logistics, farmer coordination. Most others avoid these. But that’s where the real value is created.