Background
Norfolk Virginia Sherrif’s Office (NSO) is a public service organization focused on safety, support, and rehabilitation. As part of its inmate services program, NSO operates 811Marketplace.com, an online ordering platform that allows friends and family to purchase freshly prepared meals for incarcerated individuals.
When this project began, the platform was running on Umbraco 7, which was well past end of life, and relied on an ecommerce package that was no longer supported. Over time, operational needs had outgrown the original system design, and the team was forced to bend existing functionality into evolving workflows. The result was an increasingly inflexible system that limited NSO’s ability to improve the experience for customers and streamline fulfillment.
NSO’s key challenges included:
No bulk rescheduling capability, making it difficult to handle schedule changes at scale
Restrictive meal scheduling rules, limited to specific days of the week rather than any date
Limited Reporting, reducing visibility into ordering and operational performance
These constraints made modernization important not only for security and supportability, but also to enable the operational flexibility required to run a high volume, service driven marketplace reliably.
Solution
Rebuilding 811MarketPlace.com from the ground up created an opportunity to modernize the platform and redesign operational workflows around NSO’s real world fulfillment needs.
Marathon consulting implemented Umbraco with Umbraco Commerce as the foundation for the new solution. Umbraco Commerce was selected as a flexible commerce foundation, providing the core building blocks for products, pricing, ordering, and payments, while allowing Marathon to design NSO’s specialized scheduling, reporting, and fulfillment workflows beyond a traditional storefront. The site was purpose built with the new rewritten Umbraco back office, making the administrative experience more maintainable and future ready.
To streamline day-to-day operations, Marathon built a custom administrative section in the Umbraco back office that leverages Umbraco commerce and provides staff with purpose-built tools, including:
Order and delivery controls, including the ability to reschedule meal deliveries efficiently when schedules change
Financial and product reporting, enabling staff to track revenue, analyze ordering and delivery trends, and manage order data with confidence
Tailored fulfillment functionality, designed around NSO’s multi step delivery process to improve accuracy, consistency, and accountability
The solution also addressed the logistical complexity of meal delivery within the Norfolk City Jail, which spans multiple buildings and floors. Staff can now generate a daily delivery report organized by jail building and floor, simplifying distribution across multiple locations. At delivery, inmates sign a receipt to confirm they received their meal. Staff then scan the signed receipts into the fulfillment area using a barcode reader, which automatically marks orders as completed and creates an auditable delivery record. Once completion is recorded, the system sends an automated confirmation email to the purchaser, reducing follow up inquiries and closing the loop end to end.
Impact
The new 811MarketPlace.com, built on Umbraco and Umbraco Commerce, modernized a mission critical service while removing day-to-day friction for both staff and customers. By treating Umbraco Commerce as a configurable commerce engine, NSO gained a platform that supports operational workflows like date-based scheduling, batch reporting, and auditable fulfillment, not just online purchasing. NSO gained a platform that supports reliable operations, clearer visibility into ordering trends, and a fulfillment process designed for accuracy and accountability.
Key Improvements Included:
Commerce as a workflow engine, leveraging Umbraco Commerce for ordering, scheduling, reporting, and fulfillment, beyond a conventional cart experience
Operational reporting rebuilt for real workflows, with updated data models and reports designed around NSO’s internal needs
Daily batch delivery reporting, providing pre delivery printouts and structured tracking by location to streamline fulfillment
Improved customer experience, with clearer navigation and a more intuitive ordering flow for friends and family
More reliable order completion and confirmation, supported by a structured fulfillment and confirmation process
Accessibility improvements, with the solution designed to meet WCAG 2.2 AA requirements
Net result, NSO can plan and manage meals more effectively, identify and respond to demand for popular items, and deliver a smoother experience that helps ensure each order reaches the right recipient.
