It can be very advantageous to enlist the help of a food distributor to help you present your food products to buyers as well as figuring out promotional campaigns to place your brand on the map.

Sometimes it can become an uphill battle to get a foot in the door with large nationwide retailers as they often prefer working through a broker before considering to start stocking your products. Sometimes small-batch family-owned farms, fresh produce merchants, and fresh juice makers choose to stay local and not expand, delivering their goods personally to stores or selling them at the farmer’s market. In such a case, a distributor can assist you with making sales, particularly if you don’t like doing the selling.

Can A Distributor Give You Visibility Into Where Your Products Are Being Sold?

The chances of you finding out where your beverages or foods are being sold are when you’re working with a smaller wholesaler. It happens in most cases that once a food manufacturer sold their products to a more extensive nationwide distributor; they don’t always get information on where the products are getting sold to. This can make it tricky to retain the accounts and pursue them from re-ordering your product. At Hunt Point Market, they can make a point of knowing their customer the customer or accounts they are selling to and can pass the information on to the manufacturer. It is especially vital for a distributor to honour a manufacturer’s requests when it comes to selling fresh produce, mainly if they prefer not to supply to a specific account. It is not economical to keep selling a particular product to a retailer where it won’t sell. That is not beneficial to anyone.

What Is The Colossal Mistake A Fresh Produce Seller Can Make When Supplying Through A Distributor?

The most significant error you can make when you’re selling your produce through a distributor is not anticipating pricing, therefore pricing incorrectly. It’s essential to make room for expansion when selling through a distribution when you’re drafting your business plan from the get-go.

The most regular mistake that people make is to anticipate that they can sell their products to a distributor at the same price than selling directly to a retailer. No distributor is going to measure up to that. For example, if you are aiming to make a $15 profit per pound, you must consider adding a distributor margin to your cost, therefore when you’re ready to start distributing, you'll be able to sell at the manufacturer price into the distributor vs. the direct price you’re selling into the retailer.

You Also Need To Think About How The Produce Will Go To The Distributor:

  • Will the distributor collect the fresh produce from you (which adds freight charger to the cost) or?
  • Will you be taking it to them? This means it will affect the freight costs that a distributor generally adds to the price of the produce.