How Magic Spoon is building an automation-first culture and saving 500+ hours a year

Scaling retail meant more complexity, not more headcount

Magic Spoon launched in 2019 with a bold idea: bring back the joy of childhood cereal, but rebuild it with high protein, no sugar, and clean ingredients. The colorful boxes quickly won fans online. The brand is now everywhere—moving from a DTC-only model to major retailers such as Target, Walmart, Costco, Kroger, and Albertsons.

Starting as a DTC-native company and then switching gears to focus on retail brought a new challenge: scaling shifting operations and systems at the same pace as the brand’s growth.

With retail expansion came a flood of new complexities: new channels with different requirements, business assumptions that no longer applied, and the need to build new capabilities on a team designed for a DTC playbook. All of this added hidden layers of work to keep operations running smoothly. Each file looked different, each reconciliation took hours, and each mistake risked delaying orders or critical business decisions.

Joshua Levy, Director of IT, saw the strain up close. Hiring your way out of the problem only masks the issues and doesn't solve them. “Workflow automation was always something that I was passionate about… I’ve been waiting for the time where these softwares are simple enough for the end users to design,” he said. "The best solutions for problems like these often come from the people doing the day-to-day work—all you have to do is enable and guide them"

Magic Spoon needed a way to stay lean while scaling fast.

Automating key workflows with Parabola

Joshua first heard about Parabola through his brother-in-law, who suggested it as a better option than the Zapier and Pipedream automations they were using at the time. Around the same time, Magic Spoon’s head of logistics came across Parabola in a conversation with other operators and encouraged the team to take a closer look.

After evaluating the tool, Joshua and the team saw the potential. “Parabola delivered tangible results almost immediately, and that’s why it’s one of our top initiatives for 2026,” he said.

The team turned to Parabola to take on their most time-consuming work, with Michael Thorson from the logistics team championing the rollout and building the first key flows. The impact was immediate:

• Month end reconciliations: What once stretched 10 hours each month now takes just one or two
• Increased team capacity: What used to be unattainable due to available resources became a recurring flow that brought insights that would have otherwise been missed
• Integration maintenance: Daily recurring maintenance tasks were automated which saved time, and automated alerts allowed for addition controls to reduce risk

These early wins Michael was able to build shifted the company’s perspective: automation wasn’t just a side project, it could become a core part of Magic Spoon's future plan to grow rapidly.

Making automation a company-wide skill

To spread that mindset, Magic Spoon hosted a Parabola Day. Every team—operations, finance, HR, and even the leadership team—came together to learn how to build in Parabola.

“Fifty percent of the company has already experimented with Parabola. Our goal is that by 2026, automation becomes a natural part of how everyone approaches their work.”

This cultural investment also opened the door to experiments with AI. Joshua’s team has been building internal tools to take on repetitive, frustrating tasks like EDI error handling. Instead of waiting on slow support or digging through specs, the system suggests resolutions instantly, pulling from Magic Spoon’s own history of solved tickets.

“It’s the perfect use case for AI,” Joshua said. “We can get the recommendation instantly and keep orders moving.”

Together, Parabola and AI are giving Magic Spoon the foundation to scale without scaling headcount.

500 hours back, and a blueprint for lean growth

With Parabola in place, Magic Spoon has unlocked both time savings and better insights:

• ~500 hours saved annually: Time reclaimed across IT, operations and finance workflows
• Higher accuracy: Joshua estimates at least a 10% improvement in accuracy for month end close reporting
• Real-time alerts: High-impact orders flagged immediately to keep fulfillment on track
• Faster insights: Teams get the data they need in minutes instead of hours

Most importantly, Magic Spoon can scale without adding headcount at the same pace. The company's vision for 2026 centers on empowering teams to solve their own workflow challenges, with Parabola as a key enabler of that self-sufficiency.

“From leadership down, everyone agrees that Parabola is one of our top initiatives for 2026. The question is moving from, ‘Do we need to hire someone?’ to ‘Can we use Parabola first?’”

‍

—

This customer story is for informational purposes only. Parabola makes no warranties, express or implied, in this document.