It’s a Big, Big Distribution World
The U.S. distribution chain includes more than 15,000 companies operating thousands of warehouses and fleets of trucks. A typical broadline foodservice distributor
may serve anywhere from 1,000 to 6,000 accounts from a single distribution center,
and offer customers more than 10,000 food and non-food items. Other types include
specialty distributors that focus on specific product categories or customer segments;
distribution systems that serve large restaurant chains; and other businesses such as terminal markets and warehouse clubs.
In 2009, U.S. distributors’ annual sales will be an estimated $211 billion, down
from $217 billion in 2008 and $216 billion in 2007, according to Technomic Inc., a
foodservice research and consulting firm. “The commercial foodservice market, particularly restaurants, is in a major slump, and distributors are a reflection of what the
end-market is doing,” says Robert Goldin, executive vice president of Technomic.
The largest distribution companies are Sysco Corp., headquartered in Houston,
TX; U.S. Foodservice, based in Rosemont, IL;
and Performance Food Group in Richmond, VA.
Other major players included in Technomic’s
2008 Power Distributors List include (in order of
size): Gordon Food Service, Grand Rapids, MI;
Reinhart FoodService, LaCrosse, WI; Services
Group of America, Scottsdale, AZ; Maines Paper
& Food Service, Conklin, NY; Shamrock Foods
Co., Phoenix, AZ; Ben E. Keith Foods, Fort
Worth, TX; and Cheney Brothers, Riviera Beach,
FL.
“Customers should be aware of the food
safety differences
between distributors,
especially in a down
It’s All About Food Protection
Every distribution company has its own system for ensuring food protection, which includes food safety (protecting food from
accidental contamination) and food defense
(guarding food from intentional contamination).
“Best-in-class foodservice distributors go to
great lengths and expense to protect the products they deliver,” says Steve Potter, senior vice president of industry relations for the International Foodservice Distributors
Association (IFDA), a trade association. Several federal agencies oversee food regulation and safety in America, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA),
which regulates and monitors meat, poultry and egg products; the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration (FDA), which ensures the safety of the production, processing,
packaging and storing of domestic and imported foods; and the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC), which collaborates with USDA and FDA on disease
surveillance and outbreak response.
Of the three, USDA and FDA interact most often with the foodservice supply
chain. The “best practices” guidelines (more on these later) prepared by these agencies
cover a multitude of processes, from general sanitation to production and packing to
transportation and warehousing.
The common thread among best practices can be summed up in four words:
“maintaining the cold chain.” A key part of every successful distributor’s food safety
program involves refrigerated docks, multiple refrigeration zones within distribution
centers and multi-temperature trailers.
“In many ways, the transportation of food can be viewed as an extension of storage,” writes Robert James Hart in his article “Food Science—The Transportation of
Food,” a scholarly examination of the chemical and molecular structure of foods and
how they break down, for the book Food Transportation.1 “A refrigerated [truck] is essentially a cold store on wheels. There may be additional engineering complications in
designing and maintaining such a mobile storage facility, but the food science considerations are much the same.”
”economy when many are making choices based on price.”
Problems and Vulnerabilities
While food safety is a priority for
every reputable distributor, it’s often
taken for granted by customers. Maintaining the cold chain from farm to fork
is challenging. The average shipment—
both inbound, from supplier to distribution center, and especially outbound to
customers—consists of less-than-truck-load quantities of food products. The
number of products delivered to a customer can be in the hundreds. Each of
these products must be loaded correctly
to prevent cross-contamination with raw
product and damage by heavier items at
the bottom of a stack. And they must be
stored at the correct temperatures
(frozen, refrigerated or dry) in the truck
to maintain quality and safety. The food
has to retain its chill throughout the
multi-stop delivery process, especially in
the heat of summer when the “reefers”
(truck refrigeration units) have to work
extra-hard to maintain temperature. In
other words, there is plenty of opportunity for error.
Although food distribution companies must adhere to government regulations calling for greater food protection
scrutiny (e.g., the Bioterrorism Act of
2002), enforcement is rare. On the supplier front, over-extended government
food inspections run by FDA, USDA
and state regulatory agencies continue to
lag in both coverage and accuracy, as evidenced by the recent foodborne illness
outbreak traced back to one less-than-scrupulous peanut processing company.
“Customers should be aware of the
food safety differences between distributors, especially in a down economy when
many are making choices based on
price,” says Greg Pallaske, director of regulatory compliance for food safety and
quality assurance, U.S. Foodservice.
“That’s why it’s so important to evaluate
the food safety policies and procedures
and operations of your foodservice distribution company.”
Frank Ferko, U.S. Foodservice’s head
of distribution food safety and quality
assurance, agrees. “Most people are in-ward-looking when it comes to food
safety,” says Ferko, who has more than
33 years of experience in the restaurant,
food processing and distribution businesses. “If you’re in manufacturing, you
