Mer­chants Food­ser­vice ranks in the Top 10 in Sales Increase two con­sec­u­tive years

Largest Broad­lin­ers Grow­ing Again: Col­lec­tive Sales Rise 5%, Wipe Out ‘09 Losses

The nation’s 50 largest broad­line dis­trib­u­tors col­lec­tively broke the $100 bil­lion mark in 2010, grow­ing sales 5 per­cent over sales reported by the 2009 Top 50. It was a strong per­for­mance fol­low­ing the 2 per­cent sales decline the Top 50 expe­ri­enced in 2009. The per­for­mance of the top 10 com­pa­nies alone paints a bright turn­around pic­ture: In 2009, the top 10 together saw their sales decline by 5 per­cent, with six of the 10 com­pa­nies report­ing losses for the year. In 2010, the top 10 col­lec­tively achieved a 5 per­cent gain and only one among them, U.S. Food­ser­vice, reported a slight sales decline.

None of the top 10 dis­trib­u­tors were among the biggest gain­ers for the year. Rather, with two notable excep­tions of Cheney Broth­ers, Inc., (#11) and Mer­chants Food­ser­vice (#15), com­pa­nies in the mid­dle and lower por­tions of the rank­ings made the biggest strides in 2010. Mer­chants Food­ser­vice was the only com­pany that made the list two years in a row. Mer­chants was num­ber one in the 10 Biggest % Sales Increases in 2009 and num­ber 5 in 10 Biggest $ Sales Increases in 2009.

Indeed, com­pared to the food­ser­vice indus­try as a whole, broad­line dis­tri­b­u­tion was a bright spot. Fig­ures released by Tech­nomic, Inc., show total food­ser­vice indus­try sales in 2010 grew on a nom­i­nal basis (fac­tor­ing in 1.5% infla­tion) by just 0.7%. For dis­trib­u­tors, at least, flat is no longer the new up. Of the 2010 Top 50, 11 com­pa­nies turned in double-​digit sales increases and more than half bested the group’s 5 per­cent aver­age increase. Mer­chants Food­ser­vice reported 10.02%.

The top 10 com­pa­nies turn­ing in the largest dol­lar sales increases together added $4.5 bil­lion in rev­enue in 2010, a healthy jump from the $1.5 bil­lion the sales-​dollar lead­ers added in 2009. Dol­lar sales gained were pri­mar­ily gen­er­ated inter­nally. Acqui­si­tions, while seem­ing to heat up in 2011, weren’t major fac­tors in any of the sales gains made in 2010.

All told, the 2010 Top 50, with total sales of $100.4 bil­lion, makes up roughly half of total food­ser­vice dis­tri­b­u­tion sales, which accord­ing to Tech­nomic esti­mates, were $201 bil­lion last year.

The news for the year was, not all upbeat, but losses were sig­nif­i­cantly less than the prior year. In 2010, only five com­pa­nies reported sales declines, with the biggest being –5.43 per­cent at by IFH. In con­trast, 23 com­pa­nies reported rev­enue losses in 2009, with the largest, Upper Lakes Foods, top­ping out at –16%. That com­pany in 2010 stemmed its losses to end the year flat. Sev­eral other dis­trib­u­tors reported flat sales for 2010, as well, includ­ing Ser­vices Group of Amer­ica, C.A. Curtze Co., Feesers, Inc., Pocono Pro­duce Co., and Cedar Farms, Inc. ID esti­mates that sales at Hawk­eye Food­ser­vice and Affil­i­ated Food Ser­vice, both of which declined to pro­vide data, were flat as well.