food service distributors are companies that provide food and non-food products to restaurants, cafeterias, industrial catering, hospitals and nursing homes.
Food service distributors serve as intermediaries between food producers and food service operators (usually a chef, food service director, food and beverage manager, and self-employed food preparation owner.) Distributors buy, store, sell and ship products, provide food service operators with access to items from various manufacturers. Food service distributors provide pallets and large quantities of inventory that are broken down into cases and sometimes quantities of units for food service operators. Most food service operators purchase from a wide range of local specialty food service distributors, specialty, and food distributors every day or every week.
Often food producers can hire a food brokerage firm to represent producers in the local market. Brokers help food producers market their products through food service distribution systems, ranging from getting items stocked at distributors to working with operators to buy goods from distributors. At the same time, distributor sales teams work to market products directly to carrier customers.
Extensive distributor distributors provide a variety of accounts with a variety of products, while system distributors provide a narrow set of products for specific customers, such as restaurant chains. Extensive distributors can carry up to 15,000 different items to purchase and operate sophisticated warehouses and transport operations.
Food service distributors are often referred to as "tukars". The wagon carts will buy large quantities of food and deliver in small quantities to independent retail stores that store their shelves. Independent distributor and standalone stand-alone job store, grocery store and niche store. While these distributors are disorganized, independent distributor networks and cart workers appear to provide opportunities for these job actors to identify trends in the market.
It is estimated by a food industry research firm, Technomics, that about 225 million meals are eaten away from home every day in the US. This includes restaurants and non-commercial eating places. The International Food Service Distribution Association estimates that food service distributors in the US, as daily averages, deliver about 27 million cases of food and other products.
Food service distribution companies can range from the operation of one truck to a large company. There are many independent large-scale food distribution distribution companies serving a multi-unit service and restaurant chain under a master distribution agreement with national food service groups. These groups provide the ability to procure distributor members who rival the purchasing power of the largest distributors. This distributor group also provides private label brand distributor brands as well as marketing and quality assurance services.
In the US, the industry is heavily fragmented, with Sysco capturing 17% of the market, US Foods with around 9%, PFG with 5%, and Gold Star Foods playing mostly as well. The rest are scattered across a number of smaller regional players.
Video Foodservice distributor
Redistribution
In the food redistribution model, the redistributor will buy in truck quantities from many food manufacturers and store these products for its customers. Individual distributors (usually smaller in size and service area) can then purchase goods at several factories' easily to order from redistributors.
The redistribution model gives smaller distributors who can not buy direct trucks as an opportunity to buy from non-competitors in less than trucks (LTL), giving them the ability to compete with larger distributors in their region. Usually smaller distributors serving independent non-chain retail outlets are often overlooked by larger distributors.
Maps Foodservice distributor
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia