Milonga scaled direct-to-retail field sales for a functional yerba mate brand with SimplyDepo

Company Overview

Milonga is a Florida-based functional beverage brand producing yerba mate drinks for retail and on-premise accounts. The brand sells two product lines: a yerba mate infused with lion’s mane mushrooms and a yerba mate infused with THC and CBD, distributed across independent grocers, regional grocery chains, coffee shops, smoke shops, gas stations, and liquor stores.

The Milonga team operates lean. A full-time sales rep covers Miami, part-time reps cover Orlando and West Palm Beach, and Shadi Atassi oversees the entire operation as an administrator on the platform while also working accounts as a rep himself.

As Milonga shifted its commercial model from distributor-led sales to a direct-to-retail approach, the team needed a single platform that could structure daily field sales execution, give multi-territory visibility to leadership, and onboard new sales reps quickly as the company expands.

The Challenge

Milonga’s core challenge was operational: the brand was deliberately moving away from a distributor-heavy model toward direct retail relationships, which meant the field team—not a distributor partner—was now responsible for daily store coverage, ordering, and follow-up across the state of Florida.

Before SimplyDepo, this entire workflow lived in spreadsheets.

“I was just keeping tabs on the stores that were purchasing and when they were purchasing on an Excel spreadsheet.”

— Shadi Atassi, Milonga

Before SimplyDepo:

• Excel-Based Tracking – Store activity, order history, and follow-up timing were managed manually in spreadsheets
• Unstructured Routes – Reps planned visits informally without a shared, map-based view of nearby accounts and prospects
• Limited Multi-Territory Visibility – Leadership had no consolidated view of what reps in Miami, Orlando, and West Palm Beach were doing day to day
• Slow Onboarding – New reps had no structured platform to learn routes, customers, or order history from
• Reactive Follow-Ups – Identifying which stores hadn’t reordered required manually scanning the spreadsheet

These weren’t catastrophic problems—they were the kind of friction that compounds quietly as a brand scales. With Milonga actively expanding its rep base and shifting more revenue onto direct retail accounts, leadership wanted infrastructure in place before the volume grew, not after.

The Solution

Milonga was introduced to SimplyDepo through a former Tampa-based distributor who had personally used the platform and recommended it. Shadi had also crossed paths with John from the SimplyDepo team at BevNET in New York, and the two reconnected when Milonga began evaluating tools to support the direct-to-retail rollout.

What sold Milonga was simplicity. Shadi wasn’t looking for an enterprise CRM—he wanted something his part-time reps in multiple cities could pick up quickly and actually use every day in the field. Unlike traditional CRMs built for field sales around emails and call logs, SimplyDepo focused on in-store visits and direct ordering—exactly how Milonga’s reps actually operate.

“I didn’t want something super high-tech or super elaborate—just something simple that the reps were going to be able to use. He did a training with me, I tested it out myself, and then when I started bringing more people on, it made it easier for them.”

— Shadi Atassi, Milonga

Daily Route Building & Prospecting

• Reps and Shadi use SimplyDepo every day to plan field routes around current accounts and nearby prospects using structured route execution
• The map view surfaces prospects within a given area so reps can build efficient daily rounds instead of chasing leads ad hoc
• Routes are documented in one place, replacing the spreadsheet-and-memory approach

Mobile Direct-to-Retail Ordering

• Direct orders are written from the rep’s phone during in-store visits using B2B order management, supporting the brand’s pivot away from distributor-only sales
• Product catalogs for both the lion’s mane and THC/CBD yerba mate lines live in one centralized catalog system
• Order history attaches to each customer profile, giving reps context on what each account buys and how often

Multi-Territory Visibility for Leadership

• Shadi reviews rep activity across Miami, Orlando, and West Palm Beach from a single sales analytics dashboard
• Visit and order data is visible in real time, eliminating reliance on verbal status updates from reps
• Accounts that haven’t been ordered against in 30–45 days are easy to flag and reassign for follow-up

“I know if a store ordered a month ago, I can check it. And because I’m managing the reps, I can see this person didn’t order for the past 40 days, you should probably go follow up.”

— Shadi Atassi, Milonga

Faster Rep Onboarding

• New reps in new territories start on a platform with defined customers, routes, and order history—not a blank spreadsheet
• SimplyDepo’s one-on-one training calls are used to onboard each new rep individually
• Reps don’t need to be self-taught, which Shadi flagged as critical for a small, multi-state team

“The good thing with SimplyDepo is that you offer one-on-one trainings, because a lot of these reps don’t really know how to use it. If I just tell them to learn it, they’re not going to. So it’s good that you get on a video call and walk them through it. That’s very helpful.”

— Shadi Atassi, Milonga

Since adopting SimplyDepo, Milonga has built an organized, repeatable foundation for direct-to-retail field sales—one that doesn’t depend on any single rep’s memory or spreadsheet, and one that’s ready to absorb new reps as the brand grows.

Summary Metrics

Here’s how Milonga’s field sales operations changed after adopting SimplyDepo:

“More than time, it just makes things more organized. It’s more efficient, definitely.”

— Shadi Atassi, Milonga

Why It Works

SimplyDepo fits Milonga because it was built for the way small, growing CPG brands actually sell—in person, store by store, account by account. Instead of forcing reps into an email-heavy CRM workflow, it gives them a phone-first tool for route planning, prospecting, in-store ordering, and follow-up tracking.

For Milonga specifically, that meant a single distribution management software platform could carry the entire direct-to-retail pivot: reps in three Florida markets running structured rounds, leadership tracking activity across territories, new hires onboarded with one-on-one calls, and order history captured in one place—all without buying enterprise software the team didn’t need.

More Than Software: Responsive Support

Beyond the product, Milonga highlighted SimplyDepo’s support as a deciding factor in everyday use.

“I just text John whenever I have a question—I go directly to him.”

— Shadi Atassi, Milonga

Direct, fast access to the SimplyDepo team—plus one-on-one training calls for each new rep—kept adoption smooth as Milonga added users across Florida, and gave Shadi confidence that future hires would ramp without operational friction.

What’s Next

With SimplyDepo running day-to-day field execution, Milonga is positioned to expand its rep base, deepen direct-to-retail relationships across Florida, and grow the lion’s mane and THC/CBD product lines into more accounts.

Shadi also flagged additional functionality the team would value going forward—particularly automated reminders for accounts that haven’t ordered in 30+ days, so follow-up timing doesn’t depend on a manager remembering to check. SimplyDepo is actively reviewing this with its product team, and the close working relationship between the two companies means new ideas move quickly from feedback to roadmap.

What Milonga Says

Shadi Atassi, Milonga

“I’m a fan. I talk about it pretty well—I try to get people on board with it. I’ve already recommended it to a distributor and to reps in other states. Big ups to John and the rest of the team.”

See how other CPG brands use SimplyDepo: Read the Pricklee case study