A food service distributor is a company that provides food and non-food products to

restaurant A restaurant is a business that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in appearan ...

cafeteria A cafeteria, sometimes called a canteen outside the U.S., is a type of food service location in which there is little or no waiting staff table service, whether a restaurant or within an institution such as a large office building or school ...

s, industrial

caterers Catering is the business of providing food service at a remote site or a site such as a hotel, hospital, pub, aircraft, cruise ship, park, festival, filming location or film studio. History of catering The earliest account of major servic ...

hospital A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emerge ...

s, schools/colleges/universities,

nursing home A nursing home is a facility for the residential care of elderly or disabled people. Nursing homes may also be referred to as skilled nursing facility (SNF) or long-term care facilities. Often, these terms have slightly different meanings to in ...

s, and anywhere food is served away from the home.

Description

food service The foodservice (US English) or catering (British English) industry includes the businesses, institutions, and companies which prepare meals outside the home. It includes restaurants, school and hospital cafeterias, catering operations, and man ...

distributor functions as an intermediary between food manufacturers and the food service operator (usually a chef, food service director, food and beverage manager, and independent food preparation businesses operator owners.) The distributor purchases, stores, sells, and delivers those products, providing food service operators with access to items from a wide variety of manufacturers. Food service distributors procure pallets and bulk inventory quantities that are broken down to case and sometimes unit quantities for the food service operator. Most food service operators purchase from a range of local, specialty, and broadline food service distributors on a daily or weekly basis.

Manufacturers

Often a food manufacturer may hire a food brokerage company to represent the manufacturer in a local market. The broker helps the food manufacturer market its products through the food service distribution system, which ranges from getting items stocked at the distributor to working with operators to purchase items from the distributor. At the same time, distributor sales teams work to market products directly to operator customers.

Broadline

A broadline distributor services a wide variety of accounts with a wide variety of products, while a system distributor stocks a narrow array of products for specific customers, such as

restaurant chains A chain store or retail chain is a retail outlet in which several locations share a brand, central management and standardized business practices. They have come to dominate the retail and dining markets and many service categories, in many pa ...

. A broadline distributor may carry up to 15,000 different items for purchase and operate sophisticated warehouse and transportation operations.

Jobbers

A small food service distributor is often referred to as a " wagon-jobber". Thes
wagon-jobbers
will purchase food in bulk and deliver small quantities to independent retail stores keeping their shelves stocked. Independent distributors and jobbers service independent convenience store markets, bodegas and niche grocery stores. While these distributors are unorganized, networks of independent distributors and wagon jobbers have emerged to give these jobbers the ability to identify trends in the market.

Statistics

It is estimated by

food industry The food industry is a complex, global network of diverse businesses that supplies most of the food consumed by the world's population. The food industry today has become highly diversified, with manufacturing ranging from small, traditiona ...

research firm Technomic that approximately 225 million meals are eaten away from home each day in the U.S. This includes both restaurant and non-commercial eating places. The

International Foodservice Distributors Association The International Foodservice Distributors Association (IFDA) is a trade association serving the foodservice distribution industry. Its members include foodservice distributors, foodservice manufacturers, and foodservice buying groups. Their larg ...

estimates that food service distributors in the U.S., as a daily average, deliver approximately 27 million cases of food and other products. Food service distribution companies can range in size from a one-truck operation to larger corporations. There are many independent broadline food service distribution companies that service

chain A chain is a serial assembly of connected pieces, called links, typically made of metal, with an overall character similar to that of a rope in that it is flexible and curved in compression but linear, rigid, and load-bearing in tension. A c ...

and multi-unit restaurants based on master distribution agreements with national food service groups. These groups provide distributor members procurement capabilities that rival the purchasing power of the largest distributors. These distributor groups also provide distributor members group

private label A private label, also called a private brand or private-label brand, is a brand owned by a company, offered by that company alongside and competing with brands from other businesses. A private-label brand is almost always offered exclusively by th ...

brands as well as marketing and quality assurance services. In the US, the industry is highly fragmented, with

Sysco Sysco Corporation (short for Systems and Services Company) is an American multinational corporation involved in marketing and distributing food products, smallwares, kitchen equipment and tabletop items to restaurants, healthcare and education ...

capturing 17% of the market,

US Foods US Foods (formerly known as U.S. Foodservice) is an American foodservice distributor. With approximately $24 billion in annual revenue, US Foods was the 10th largest private company in America until its IPO. It was founded in August 1989. Many o ...

with about 9%, PFG with 5%,

Gordon Food Service Gordon Food Service (GFS) is a foodservice distributor based in Wyoming, Michigan serving the Midwest, Northeast, Southeast, and Southwest regions of the United States and coast-to-coast in Canada. It also operates stores in Florida, Illinois, I ...

and

Gold Star Foods Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...

playing a large part as well. The rest are spread across a host of smaller, regional players.Sysco Investor Day presentation, December 2010 http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/SYY/1124004662x0x425013/e7a21c77-2b2e-4cf6-b6c0-9b059aa02865/Investor_Day_2010_FInal_8-K.pdf

Redistribution

In the food ''redistribution'' model, a redistributor will purchase in truckload quantities from many food manufacturers and warehouse these products for its customers. Individual distributors (typically smaller in size and service area) can then purchase items across multiple manufacturers' on one easy to place order from the redistributor. The redistribution model affords smaller distributors who are unable to purchase direct truckloads an opportunity to purchase from a non-competitor in

less than truckload Less-than-truckload shipping or less than load (LTL) is the transportation of an amount of freight sized between individual parcels and full truckloads. Parcel carriers handle small packages and freight that can be broken down into units less t ...

(LTL) quantities, giving them the ability to compete against larger distributors in their territory. Typically it is the smaller distributor that services the independent non-chain retail outlets often overlooked by the larger distributors.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Foodservice Distributor Distribution (marketing) Foodservice companies