Food Service Distributors in Singapore

Here are 3 things you didn’t know about food service distributors.

1. There are different kinds of food service distributors.

In general there are 4 kinds of food service distributors:

Broadline Distributors

Broadline distributors offer a variety of products from wholesale meats, wholesale seafood, cheeses, herbs and other ingredients a typical F&B business might need. They also distribute bulk orders for cleaning supplies because sanitation is a very important aspect in any restaurant and a certain level of cleanliness is required to operate. They are the biggest and most logistically heavy in terms of packing, flash freezing and transporting ingredients.

Specialty Distributors

Speacialty distributors focus on the distribution of one specific product type such as meats and seafood that require a specific kind of handling. Their vehicles may need to be chilled to ensure the freshness of the ingredients as they deliver it to their clients and their supply chain is catered to the specific needs of the ingredient.

Cash & Carry

These distributors are unique in that it is the only type of distributor that does not directly transport products to food service providers such as restaurants. Instead, business owners or chefs go to these cash and carry warehouses and pick out wholesale products to purchase.

Redistributor

These distributors work with smaller scale products to cater to smaller food operators that are too small to buy in bulk from broadline distributors. Typically, their products can be purchased at less than a truckload quantities.

2. Some brands work exclusively with certain distributors.

Some distributors try to gain a competitive edge over other distributors by working exclusively with a brand. For instance, Oregano Trading is the only food service distributor in Singapore that supplies products from the Japanese Izumi brand. Otherwise, it’s hard to distinguish yourself as a distributor from the others. Food operators care about the quality of ingredients and as long as distributors maintain the quality, they are often not inclined to switch because of the good relationship they have already built.

3. Food service distributors are more specialized than you think.

Food service distributors, especially broadline distributors can often seem indistinguishable from one another because of the variety and volume of products they offer but they are more specialized than it seems. As the F&B industry has various kinds of stores to cater to the different income levels in society — hawkers versus an omakase restaurant — the food service distributors also tend to brand themselves as providing ingredients of a certain quality. It enables them to charge a certain premium if they provide to higher end restaurants. This differs because of the different farms, producers and factories that each distributor works with. Hence, some food service distributors focus on providing premium ingredients in bulk while others might focus on getting the cheapest ingredients they can.