Case Study: Hickory Farms achieves scalable tax compliance and omnichannel growth with Avalara

Hickory Farms Transforms for Growth

Hickory Farms, a long‑running retailer of food gifts and specialty foods selling online, by catalog, through mass merchants and in more than 750 seasonal stores, faced growing pains as it modernized. Accumulated technical debt left legacy systems unable to support a new multichannel strategy, while increasingly complex sales‑tax rules — different taxability for food versus nonfood items in the same gift box, differing tax treatment by shipping channel, and reporting requirements across 46 states and many local jurisdictions — made compliance a major barrier to growth.

To address this, Hickory Farms implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations with RSM and integrated Avalara AvaTax for tax calculation and Avalara CertCapture for exemptions and document management, plus address verification in its commerce platform. The integrations have been smooth and scalable, allowing accurate tax calculations at the point of sale, enabling new omnichannel scenarios (for example, in‑store pickup and cross‑state fulfillment in one transaction), improving customer experience, and removing a key obstacle to growth.

Hickory Farms

Matt James

Chief Operating Officer