Finding Better Food Suppliers

Posted on: 22 July 2021

Success in selling pre-packaged food items comes down to how well you manage the available retail space. Ask yourself these two questions:

1. How well understood are the customers?
2. How efficiently utilized is this retail space?

In most cases, unless you're a grocery store, it's impossible to sell food that fits everyone's needs. You need to tailor your inventory. Presenting the wrong food at a certain time of day will certainly thwart a sale. Also, presenting gourmand pre-packaged dishes to lower-income brackets and vice versa will have a similar effect. Timing is everything.

Knowing Your Customers

If your store is located in a higher-income area, you can expect a greater demand for fresh food and certified organic dishes. Salads, fruit, and higher-end entrees will usually sell better in these areas. Additionally, offering gourmand condiments, cheeses, and snacks could provide a profitable income stream.

In lower-income areas, customers are more likely to consider the greater calorie but lower-cost entrees. Carb-heavy foods will tend to sell better than meat and vegetable-centric dishes. When in doubt, stock entrees that pair well with ranch dressing.

Presenting the Food

​Ideally, you want to display all of your available inventory to customers at all times. However, in many cases, this just isn't practical. There's not enough room to offer everything for many retail establishments like convenience stores, especially if the food items need to be refrigerated or frozen.

Thankfully, you can confidently predict what types of pre-packaged meals will sell depending on the time of day it is. Your staff can rotate the pre-packaged meals according to what's likely to sell based on what time it is: Egg meals and other breakfast items in the morning, sandwiches and salads at lunch, and entrees for dinner.

Snack food should always be available, regardless of the time. Chilled snacks that come from the deli case seem to do very well. Platters of boiled eggs, cheeses, and crackers will typically sell from 7 am to 7 pm.

Final Thoughts

Most wholesale pre-packaged food suppliers can meet all your requirements for pre-packaged food. They can deliver nutritious food at any quality level, reasonable price point, and quantity that you require. In many cases, you can also work with the food supplier to create a private label or custom branding for the items that you choose to sell in your store. This allows you to create positive brand associations that will keep your customers coming back. For more information, contact a wholesale food supplier, such as Interstate Caterers, for more information.