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Ready for reopening? Industry leaders at a webinar titled ‘Wholesale – The Road to Recovery’, organised by Arena, considered the challenges facing the foodservice channel as lockdown is eased.
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tock, cashflow and credit are just three of the issues that wholesalers need to address as restaurants, pubs and other hospitality outlets open their doors after months of crippling restrictions. How well the hospitality sector fares depends to a large extent on the weather, especially in the early days of reopening when serving consumers is restricted to the outdoors, but beyond that, there are still many unknowns, according to the speakers at Arena’s recent webinar. Brakes has conducted an “unprecedented number” of pulse surveys to find out how its customers are feeling and to ensure that its response is insight-led. CEO Hugo Mahoney said: “Our customers are talking about four things: quality of products, availability, value and safety. “We are working very hard with our suppliers to make sure we can maximise availability of our brilliant range of products and also make sure there is some flexibility in there as well. If there is fluctuating demand, we are going to need to have frozen alternatives and be creative with ambient products so that we do not create a big waste bomb. “On value, we have a huge programme of support for our customers (page 6) – price holds, price cuts and service flexibility: everything to get our customers back on their feet as quickly as we can.
Hugo Mahoney: ‘The £1 of foodservice spend will turn up in a different place.’
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April 2021
Consumers may want to work from a café or a pub instead of from home.
“On safety, contactless delivery and contactless payment are features that are important right now. Whether they will be as important in 12 months time we don’t know, but we have a dedicated responsibility to make sure that our deliveries are safe. When we come back as an industry, we want to make sure we come back for good this time.” Coral Rose, managing director of Country Range Group, believes that the next couple of months are going to be “pretty critical” for wholesalers. “One of the key issues is cash,” she said. “Caterers want 100% availability but they also want reduced minimum order quantities and more frequent deliveries – they haven’t got the cash to invest in stock, so they will be using their wholesaler as their storeroom. Wholesalers are having to invest in this additional stockholding. “Customers are also going to be expecting extended credit and will want more time to pay off debts that may be outstanding from last year.” Rose added: “Wholesalers maybe haven’t performed as well as they would have liked over the last 12 months, so in terms of getting credit availability from suppliers, the computer may say no but we would ask suppliers to look at the situation so that wholesalers are not squeezed further.”
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Rose questioned whether suppliers are geared up to give wholesalers the stock they need. “We don’t know how much of the market is going to open, what the demand will be like. Are our suppliers really ready?” “Availability is going to be key,” agreed Andrew Selley, CEO of Bidcorp. “We have to be agile and we will need our supplier partners to be agile to respond to the fluctuations in demand. Certain products will take off more than we expect. There is a danger that we could be too cautious; we are hopeful that it is going to go absolutely crazy.” He continued: “All of us have done a lot of planning and a lot of preparing, but none of us is going to get it 100% right. The key request I have is for understanding up and down the supply chain. We have to work with each other to maximise the opportunity that is there with the challenges that will come.”
Andrew Selley: ‘The request I have is for understanding in the supply chain.’
The speakers at the webinar agreed that wholesalers’ customers are looking for insight and advice on a range of issues, including menus, safety and hygiene solutions, and targeting different groups of consumers, such as those working from home who perhaps want to work from a café or a pub instead. “To a certain extent, people want to just get out again, but they are expecting a very high standard, something they can’t get at home,” pointed out Selley. “There is a desire to reduce waste up
