Daniel Hinkeldein is dedicated to an idea that is as simple as it is consistent: the best everyday products directly from the producer, without the detours of the supermarket. With Delidia, he sells olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and tomato products directly from the source. Sales are seasonal, based on harvest campaigns, and with a clear focus on quality. In this interview, he explains how Billbee helps him reliably maintain this quality standard in his day-to-day operations.
I am Daniel Hinkeldein, founder of Delidia, a B2C online shop centered around the tomato: vinegar and oil, salt and pepper, all from direct sources. We operate in harvest campaigns and completely without middlemen.
The fundamental problem we solve is the anonymity and mediocrity of supermarket goods. Unless you happen to live near a good oil mill in Tuscany or a pepper plantation in Kerala, you usually have to settle for products optimized for price rather than taste. A small but telling example: pepper powder is industrially and chemically stripped of its pepper content because piperine is in high demand in the industry. Piperine is the active ingredient responsible for the aroma. The resulting pepper dust is then simply mixed back into the ground powder. The result? Ground pepper is cheaper than whole pepper but has significantly less aroma.
At Delidia, you get the opposite: the best everyday product, directly from people who are truly committed to quality. Anyone who has ever tasted olive oil straight from the producer knows exactly what I’m talking about.
For me, Billbee solved two specific problems right from the start: mapping product sets and invoicing.
The tool I used before couldn't handle either of those satisfactorily. I had to download invoices individually by hand—there was simply no automatic way to do it. It was a real time-sink: the same manual clicks, day after day. And our product bundles, i.e., sets of multiple items, couldn't be mapped properly in that tool either. Fortunately, both processes now run automatically in the background.
At the time, Billbee was comparable in price to my previous tool. However, it could do significantly more in day-to-day use. Furthermore, the integration with our shop system, Shopify, ran smoothly, which was very important to me.
But what really convinced me was the support. In addition to customer support, Billbee has a very strong community—the so-called "Bees." These are experienced Billbee users who help out on the community platform and in the chat. Response times are super fast. I’ve been able to solve 99% of my queries this way, often within a few minutes. For me as a founder, that makes a real difference in my daily work.
Honestly, it doesn't really exist. Everything just runs. That is exactly the biggest advantage for me: Billbee runs reliably in the background without me having to intervene constantly. Like a good shoe that you don't even notice you're wearing.
I actively use Billbee primarily for organic certification audits. It’s super practical to be able to clearly document my figures: incoming goods, orders, and all data per product.
The stock reach calculation with automatic email notification is my absolute favorite. Based on sales data, Billbee calculates how long my current stock will last and automatically sends me a message before a product runs low.
This is worth its weight in gold, especially for our harvest campaigns. The information reaches me exactly when I need to act. I don't have to open a dashboard or maintain lists to do it. This allows me to reorder in time or plan the next campaign before anything sells out.
That aligns with my core philosophy: a good tool only notifies you when it actually has something to say.
Yes—a mistake on my part that taught me a lot.
At first, I didn't realize that inventory changes in Shopify aren't automatically synced to Billbee. In practical terms, this means if you only update your stock in Shopify, Billbee won't know about it. The result: the tool thinks you're out of stock and hides your product in the shop.
I learned that the hard way: I had emailed all my customers to promote a product as part of a campaign. No one ordered. Or rather, no one could order. Luckily, I found the error quickly. Since then, I manage my inventory directly in Billbee—and my harvest campaigns run smoothly.
For me, SEO is the most important tool for gaining visibility. Social media, on the other hand, plays a much smaller role. That's why I rely on SISTRIX for search engine optimization.
For customer reviews, I use Judge.me, a solid tool for authentic reviews. When I'm having a bad day, I just look at our Wall of Love. That helps.
I use the Singularity App to clean up duplicates in my customer database. It happens that a customer uses different email addresses for purchases and ends up appearing in the system multiple times. That can be fixed quickly with the app.
For email marketing, I also use Brevo (formerly Sendinblue): it's attractively priced, based in Europe, and in my view, a great choice when it comes to data privacy. As a merchant, having a provider based in Europe is important to me for data protection reasons. And the generous free plan makes Brevo very attractive, especially when you're just starting out.
Take a moment to consider whether Billbee fits your setup – and then the best thing to do is test it out in your day-to-day operations. Integration is quick, and you’ll realize pretty fast whether Billbee suits your way of working.
My top tip for getting started: Ask the Bees! The community is active, helpful, and quick to respond. It’s the fastest way to get to know Billbee. I asked a lot of questions at the beginning, and every single one was answered. Today, I hardly need any help at all. The journey from beginner to Billbee virtuoso is shorter than you think.
