Oser Communications Group

GOURMET NEWS AUGUST 2014 www.gourmetnews.com Specialty Distributors & Brokers SPECIALTY DISTRIBUTORS & BROKERS 1 4 BRIEFS KeHE Awarded Distribution Deal by Safeway KeHE Distributors recently announced that it has reached an agreement to become the specialty and natural foods distributor to Safeway's Texas Division, including the Randalls and Tom Thumb banners. Safeway operates 63 Tom Thumb stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and 44 Randalls stores in the Houston and Austin areas. KeHE, which already distributes specialty cheese to Randalls and Tom Thumb stores, will begin providing specialty and natural foods to the stores on September 1. KeHE Distributors, based in Naperville, Ill., provides natural and organic, specialty and gourmet, international and multicultural and fresh products to the chain grocery, independent grocery, natural food, and niche specialty retail channels throughout North America. For more information, visit KeHE Distributors online at www.kehe.com, or call 800.995.5343. Sidney Frank Named U.S. Distributor of MONKEY 47 Gin Sidney Frank Importing Company, Inc., and Black Forest Distillers of Germany recently announced that Sidney Frank will become the exclusive importer and distributor of MONKEY 47 Schwarzwald Dry Gin in the United States, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. MONKEY 47 is a batch-distilled, handcrafted dry gin that skillfully unites British traditions, the exoticism of India and the purity and nativeness of Germany's Black Forest. The gin features unusual botanicals such as lingonberries and exotic Asian botanicals. MONKEY 47 was first introduced in Germany in May, 2010. The gin is currently available in 20 countries and has received top honors from around the world for both taste and design. Additionally, Drink International Global Survey just ranked MONKEY 47 as number four of the top 10 trending gin brands served at the World's 50 Best Bars. US Foods Announces Plans for N.H. Distribution Center US Foods recently announced it plans to open a distribution center in Seabrook, N.H. to better serve its customers throughout the New England area. The company currently services this customer base from its facility in Peabody, Mass. While the Peabody facility is approximately 188,000 square feet, the new facility will offer more than 500,000 square feet of space, including additional dry and cold storage and fleet fueling and maintenance areas. The company has partnered with the ESI Group to execute the renovation of the new facility to ensure it operates as efficiently as possible. Construction began at the end of June, and the company aims to move its operations into the new building in the first quarter of 2015. With approximately $22 billion in annual revenue, US Foods offers more than 350,000 products. Discover more at www.usfoods.com. United Natural Foods Inc. Announces Agreement to Acquire Tony's Fine Foods United Natural Foods Inc. recently an- nounced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire all of the stock of Tony's Fine Foods, a leading distributor of perishable food products including a wide array of specialty protein, cheese, deli, food- service and bakery goods throughout the Western United States, as well as Alaska and Hawaii. Founded in 1934 by the Ingoglia family, Tony's products are sold primarily to retail and specialty grocers, foodservice cus- tomers and other distribution companies. "Natural protein and specialty perishable products are a very important part of UNFI's future. Tony's Fine Foods will serve as our platform for building out our na- tional perimeter product offering. These fast growing products will help us further expand market share as we build out our retail store SKU offering," said Steven Spin- ner, UNFI's President and Chief Executive Officer. "We welcome Scott and Karl Berger and look forward to working with the en- tire Tony's Fine Foods team of professionals as we build upon their more than 80 years of marketing, logistics and distribution ex- cellence to continually deliver exceptional customer service and drive future growth." "Tony's has a consistent track record of providing quality products and innovative logistical solutions to a wide variety of food industry establishments with a commitment to superior customer service," added Karl Berger, Tony's Fine Foods Co-President and third generation operator. "We are thrilled to become part of UNFI, one of the leading natural, organic and specialty distributors in the U.S. and Canada, while maintaining our West Coast distribution and logistics network. We believe together, Tony's and UNFI will deepen our relationships with ex- isting customers and broaden our reach to new customers across all of our markets." United Natural Foods Inc. carries and distributes more than 65,000 products to more than 31,000 customer locations throughout the United States and Canada. The company serves a wide variety of retail formats including conventional supermar- ket chains, natural product superstores, in- dependent retail operators and the food service channel. For more information, visit www.unfi.com. GN Mainstreaming of Specialty Products Provides Opportunities for Grocery Retailers BY LORRIE BAUMANN American consumers are putting a more di- verse array of products into their market baskets than ever before, including ethnic foods, gourmet food products and natural foods, and today's independent grocery re- tailers are racing to catch up with the main- streaming of what used to be considered specialty products. This is according to Joe Falvey, President of Market Centre, the spe- cialty subsidiary of Unified Grocers, a co- operative distributor owned by about 400 independent grocers with more than 1,300 stores in the western United States. Market Centre is Unified Grocer's banner for a separate operating company, formed a decade ago by combining four smaller dis- tribution companies into a subsidiary of the distributor. It is now focused on sourcing and distributing natural, gourmet, ethnic and health-beauty-wellness products, as well as confections to Unified's member stores. Market Centre also serves more than 1,600 smaller, non-member stores through its Neighborhood Markets program. In addition to serving as President of Market Centre, Joe Falvey is also the Senior Vice President of Unified Grocers. Falvey is currently spearheading the expansion of the company's natural products offerings into California from its base in the Pacific Northwest, where Market Centre has of- fered a full range of natural products since 2011. Market Centre currently offers its re- tailers about 59,000 SKUs in its five prod- uct categories, not including those products that are carried in the center store freezer and deli cases. Along the way, Market Centre is finding ways to expand independent grocers' wellness centers by integrating natural homeopathic medicines and dietary sup- plements alongside over-the-counter pharmaceuticals. That requires some care to create displays that will accommodate these new products without making it harder for consumers to find the products they are accustomed to buying or causing them a mild degree of culture shock when they notice products on the shelf with which they are not familiar. "We're intro- ducing it without alienating some of the customers who still want to buy main- stream products," Falvey says. Market Centre is encouraging the Uni- fied Grocers retailers in California to re- place some of the gondolas in their health-beauty-wellness stores with custom- built islands and four-foot refrigeration units in which to display probiotic prod- ucts. That careful merchandising helps to create an atmosphere that is less intimidat- ing to customers who do not like change. It also eschews a model that is perhaps a lit- tle too similar to that employed by Whole Foods and which may be discomforting to more conservative consumers. Falvey noted that grocers today have a unique opportunity to reach out to millen- nial generation customers who are gravitat- ing to the wellness centers in their independent grocery stores as they ignore the brands that appealed to their parents in favor of products they find more interest- ing. "They're looking for something differ- ent than the standard grocery item," Falvey says. "They think, 'I don't want to buy what Mom bought. I want to try something dif- ferent.'" Along with reaching out to millenials, Falvey also sees opportunities for retailers to expand their ethnic food offerings, point- ing out that although the grocery retailers traditionally saw Asian foods as products desired primarily by consumers of Asian an- cestry and Latin foods as products pur- chased exclusively by Hispanic consumers, that is no longer the case. "Asian food's be- come a behavioral change, not necessarily a demographic change," he says. "Everybody eats sriracha sauce now … Everyone's buy- ing Asian. Everyone's buying Hispanic foods … I don't know anybody who doesn't go to a Mexican restaurant." More Americans are reading nutrition la- bels on the products they are buying in their grocery stores as well, and, according to Falvey, consumers are increasingly seeking out products that contain fewer ingredients. "We see it in the data, but more importantly, we're hearing it from our retailers, and they're hearing it from their customers," he said. "If you're ahead of the curve, you prob- ably learned it by talking to people." As specialty products become part of the mainstream, and curious customers ven- ture out of their accustomed pathways in their neighborhood stores, there are oppor- tunities for retailers to drive sales if they find ways to engage consumers, keeping them in the store longer. Falvey points out that retailers can create a "treasure hunt" experience that keeps shoppers interested and having fun. Falvey noted that millenial generation shoppers in particular are more curious about a lot more things than their parents were, and catering to curiosity is something that independent retailers can do well, particularly in these specialty cat- egories where Falvey feels that it is easier for a retailer to be creative than it is with more mainstream product categories. "There's a lot of opportunity to provide im- pulse buy opportunities that have been walked away from," he said. "The retailers and the consumers are starving for it." GN

• Cover