Anvil by CastIron
The whole universe, ranked by evidence.
Anvil is commercial intelligence for foodservice producers, distributors, and brokers. It ranks the full U.S. operator universe against your own catalog and sales data, market by market, down to the individual operator. Your team gets a prioritized list backed by evidence instead of another tool stack to figure out alone.
of restaurants open, close, or reshape their menus every year. The list you called last month is already stale.
The product
One ranked list your team can work top to bottom.
Every account carries a score, a size-of-prize, and the reason it moved. Nothing in Anvil invents a number. If we couldn't measure it, the screen says so.
Ranked prospect bench
1,024,318 operators scored against your product hierarchy. Sorted by composite.
Illustrative view. Operator names and figures are examples.
The gap
Why this is hard.
The U.S. foodservice channel is fragmented and runs through layers of intermediaries. Whether you make the product, distribute it, or represent it, the operators who will actually buy are far more diverse than any single assumption would suggest.
Fragmented channel
Hundreds of thousands of operators, and no single segment tells the whole story.
Data opacity
Product reaches the operator through several distribution paths at once, and the evidence of it sits in separate places. Nobody stitches them together, so no one derives the insight.
Market drift
30–40% annual operator turnover means 3–4% monthly. Yesterday's target list is already stale.
Instinct-led targeting
Most commercial teams enter markets with a wide net: broad coverage, gut feel, and a lot of misses.
Wide coverage, no map. Reps pick targets on instinct and move between accounts without a plan. Nothing learned on one call carries to the next.
Operators ranked across the full U.S. market, with size of prize per account. Reps work the list in order, and it's re-ranked every month.
Everyone has the same territory. The difference is knowing where to start.
The platform
Pick your side of the table.
You sell through distributors, but demand starts on the operator's menu. Anvil ranks the national operator universe against your product catalog, so you know which markets to push, which segments to build for, and which distributors to bring the story to.
- Ranked operators mapped to your catalog, not a generic lead list
- Menu gaps at existing accounts: the categories you should already be filling
- A data-backed distributor sell-in narrative, grounded in market size and operator fit
- Market tiers to aim trade spend and rep time at
Where the demand is
- How much of your category gets bought, and where in the country
- Which kinds of restaurants are buying it, market by market
- Which markets to work first, and who is already selling into them
Which of your products fit
- Which of your products each market wants most
- Which restaurants serve dishes your products belong in, by name
- How much of that business you could realistically win
Your reps carry thousands of accounts with no order of operations. Anvil ranks the book they already have plus the whitespace around it, and attaches the reason to call to every line.
- A ranked call list per rep territory, refreshed monthly
- Whitespace operators in the DMA who are not buying yet
- Menu fit scored against the products you stock
- Upsell on your current book: what an account's menu calls for that they aren't buying from you
Where the demand is
- Total category demand in every DMA your branches serve
- Which concepts and segments drive it, street level
- Which territories are under-covered against their size
Which of your products fit
- What each account on the book should be buying and is not
- Whitespace operators whose menus match what you stock
- The revenue on the table per account, per rep
You are judged on the lines you move in the markets you own. Anvil shows where each principal's products fit on real menus and who to call first in every DMA you cover.
- Coverage and opportunity view per principal
- Operator fit by concept, segment, and menu
- Monthly change tracking so the list never goes stale
- Menu gaps at the operators you cover: what a principal's line should already be filling
Where the demand is
- Category demand across every market you represent
- Segment and concept mix behind it, DMA by DMA
- Where a principal is under-represented against the opportunity
Which lines fit where
- Which of your principals' products fit which operators
- Menu-level proof to bring into the principal review
- The call order that moves the most cases this month
Coverage
Every DMA in the country, already mapped.
The operator graph is national from day one. The same engine scales down from national to regional to local, so you can start where your team sells today and expand without rebuilding the map.
Every operator resolves to one reconciled record, so the list your reps work is the same list every month.
Turnover
Restaurants turn over, menus shift. A static list is wrong by the time it lands.
Operators open, close, change concept, and change hands at 3–4% a month. Over a year that is a third of the universe your reps are calling. Purchased lists and one-off market studies start aging the day they ship.
Anvil rebuilds the universe every month. Every operator record is re-reconciled and re-ranked. You get the new list and a short recap of what changed, so the call queue reflects this month's market.
- New operators in your DMAs+312
- Confirmed closures removed−188
- Menus refreshed41,904
- Concept or segment shifts76
- Operators re-rankedAll
Illustrative refresh summary for a single-region scope.
Anvil is built and supported by CastIron Insights.
The team behind Anvil
Built by foodservice people, not software people.
Cast Iron Insights is a small, senior team with direct experience building sales strategy and analytics platforms for large foodservice distributors and branded producers.
The product hierarchies, synonym banks and ranking logic inside Anvil are proprietary. We built them from our own years selling into and analyzing this channel.
“We felt the gaps in true market solutions every day, so we started Cast Iron. We rank against the real operator universe, and where we can't measure something, the product says so rather than guessing.”
- 01 We've used the tools on the market ourselves. The space between producer and distributor is disconnected, complicated, and underserved, and generic data products don't solve it.
- 02 Large-scale syndicated research primarily skewed to the retail space won't cut it either.
- 03 We bridge product-, operator-, and market-level data into one view a commercial team can use every day.
Questions
Straight answers.
Who is Anvil for?
Commercial teams selling into foodservice: producers and growers, distributors, and brokers. Reps get a ranked list to work; managers get the region view; leadership gets the penetration picture.
How fast can we be live?
The average customer is live in less than 8 weeks. The national operator graph is already built, so onboarding is about layering in your data and catalog rather than starting from zero. We scope the timeline with you on the demo call, based on how much of your own data comes along.
What happens after go-live?
Monthly refresh inside the platform, with a what-changed recap: new operators, closures, concept shifts, segment drift. With 3–4% monthly turnover, a list that stops updating starts aging the day it ships.
Do we have to take national coverage?
National is the default, but the same engine scales down to a regional setup, scoped by DMA to the footprint your team sells today, with pricing that follows the coverage you choose. Start regional and move up to national whenever you are ready.
Does Anvil replace our CRM?
No. Anvil helps decide who is worth the call and why; your CRM records what happened on it. Your own sales history layers in so the ranking reflects where you already sell.
Do you need our sales data to be useful?
Exact sales data and purchase history aren't needed to give a sales team accurate, discrete direction. When we have your data we use it to read signals; when we don't, we work from the size of the restaurant and its expected menu throughput.
Get in touch
Let's talk about your real market.
If you're connected to the foodservice space in any way and are looking for a sharper view of your market, we want to hear from you.
hello@castironinsights.comStrike while the iron is hot.