Rusty Blade learns about foodservice
I was sorting through files when Russ T. Blade peeked out from behind the monitor. “Rusty,” as regular readers know, is the miniature, imaginary produce manager who appears occasionally to talk shop.
Rusty: What’s up, moving your desk again?
Me: Yeah, did some minor remodeling, so moving from my basement dugout to a real office upstairs.
Rusty: Funny how closely related some things are, and yet, so different. Take, for example, foodservice produce. I can’t imagine how those guys operate.
Me: I was fortunate in my career to work in both retail and foodservice. Coming from retail, I kinda thought foodservice volume was minimal, after seeing a delivery made at a nearby sandwich shop. A few cases stacked on a two-wheel dolly seemed like light volume. But I discovered otherwise.
Rusty: That’s the amount stocked on just one of many daily stocking tasks in retail all right.
Me: Foodservice wholesaler, jobbers, broadliners and fresh-cut facilities are every bit as massive as many retail operations. In fact (COVID-19 period being the exception), consumers split food purchases nearly 50/50 between retail and foodservice.
Rusty: Although, in retail, we must react quickly to changes. Our inventory literally turns right before our eyes.
Me: The big difference I noticed when buying for foodservice was this: In retail, if you’re out of, say, lemons, well, it’s not good. But, hey, you’re simply out until the next load. In foodservice? If you run out of lemons, you’re in big trouble. Everyone uses lemons: restaurants, bars and all the places that serve tea and other drinks. Everyone. You run out of lemons in foodservice, it affects businesses, and you can expect nonstop complaints, even to the point where you lose that business. Foodservice is a different animal.
Rusty: Guess I hadn’t thought about that. Still, it sure seems like the heaviest volume is tilted toward retail.
Me: That’s because of that sandwich-shop image. Think about the extent of foodservice: contract business (meaning restaurant chains or resorts), independent “street” restaurants, kitchen commissaries that support other foodservice businesses such as lunch wagons, churches, caterers or food trucks. It adds up.
Rusty: I know there’s always more than meets the eye, but my store sells a semitrailer a day of produce.
Me: Multiple straight loads move in and out of foodservice distributors daily, as well. These may have a mixture of grades, varieties and sizes of product on the inbound loads. Outbound to customers? Just as full loads or in a few mixed pallets as you receive in retail. Not to mention the noncommercial side of foodservice, whew!
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Rusty: Such as?
Me: Noncommercial (as in nonrestaurant) produce volume includes areas such as health care (hospitals), military bases, correctional facilities, hotel chains and more. Further, foodservice offers multiple stock-keeping units of the same commodity, depending on what a customer specifies, or “specs,” as the lingo goes.
Rusty: We offer hundreds of choices in retail, many of which I bet aren’t carried in foodservice.
Me: You’re right. You may not see multiple heirloom tomatoes in foodservice regularly stocked, or much organic. But how many romaine retail packs do you stock? Four maybe? In foodservice, there may be as many as a dozen or more, counting all the different whole or chopped specs. Growers especially love foodservice because they buy a full range of sizes, and the so-called “imperfect” lesser-grades — often priced to sell, and because these are bound for the back of the restaurant house, it doesn’t matter if the bell peppers are misshapen or the orange peels are slightly scarred. It all chops up the same and there’s a market for everything.
Rusty: Certainly, there is more to the whole produce scene than meets the eye. Just as retail has many types of banners — premium, discount, ethnic, etc. — foodservice is as formidable as retail … maybe.
