For professional customers, fresh is often a business-critical purchase. Learn how GO WHOLESALE makes fresh an advantage.
For professional customers, fresh is often a business-critical purchase.
Restaurants, caterers, foodservice operators and independent retailers need fresh products that are available when they need them, in the right quantities, at a price that works for their business. They are looking for reliable supply, competitive value and an efficient way to get the job done.
This creates a significant opportunity for food wholesaler but fresh is also one of the hardest categories to execute consistently. Quality can deteriorate quickly, demand can fluctuate, and customers have little tolerance for out-of-stocks or inconsistent specifications.
GO WHOLESALE in Thailand demonstrates how getting the fundamentals right can turn fresh into a powerful competitive advantage. It has built fresh food as destination categories, with its assortment based on main HoReCa (Hotels, Restaurants and Caterer) segments.
Here are five principles for success.
1. Build fresh around the professional customer's mission
A caterer may need large quantities of specific cuts for an event. A restaurant operator may need to source imported fruits for a wedding service. A small retailer may be looking for products that can be resold profitably.
GO WHOLESALE adds value for professional customers by offering on-demand cutting of fish, meat and poultry to specific cuts and specifications, helping businesses get exactly what they need and when they need it. Customers can also get their beef dry-aged to the specific number of days they need.
2. Make availability a competitive advantage
For a professional customer, an out-of-stock can be more than an inconvenience. It can mean making another trip to source the product elsewhere, which takes up more of their time and causes them to lose confidence.
One of GO WHOLESALE’s strength includes making difficult to source products available consistently. For example, GO WHOLESALE has live Alaskan Crab and delivers them live. This has been one of the most challenging project for GO WHOLESALE but has given them a strong competitive advantage.
3. Use pack sizes and formats to solve a business problem
The right pack size can save labour, reduce waste and make purchasing more efficient. The wrong one can create additional handling, unnecessary cost or excess stock.
GO WHOLESALE always puts the customers’ interest first, giving them greater choice in how they buy. From formats suited to smaller operators through to larger quantities for high-volume foodservice customers. The objective is not simply to sell more product per transaction, but to align the purchase with the customer's operation.
4. Own Brand and exclusive brand developed with professional customer requirements in mind
GO WHOLESALE’s private label portfolio extends well beyond ready-to-cook products, with more than 2,400 SKUs spanning fresh and frozen food, spices and seasonings, packaging, equipment, cleaning products and other essential supplies. Across brands such as A CHOICE, SUPER SAVE and PRO SAVE, the range is designed around the everyday needs of professional operators, combining quality, reliability, choice and value to help businesses manage costs and run their operations efficiently.
Value-added solutions such as marinated meats and pre-cut vegetables further help professional customers save valuable preparation time and reduce labour in their kitchens. By taking care of time-consuming tasks and offering dependable products across both food and non-food categories, GO WHOLESALE enables businesses to improve operational efficiency, maintain consistency and focus on what matters most: serving their customers.
5. Show provenance and support local farmers
Showing where products come from and how they are sourced gives customers greater confidence in quality, while helping them tell a stronger story to their own customers. Clear provenance can be particularly valuable for businesses that want to differentiate around freshness, local sourcing or quality.
GO WHOLESALE is building relationships with local growers and producers, while providing professional customers with access to locally sourced products that can bring freshness and authenticity to their businesses.
GO Wholesale's fresh strategy points to an important lesson for wholesale retail.
Winning with fresh is not about having the biggest range or the fanciest displays. It is about making things easy for the professional customer and helping them succeed in their business. That means the right products are in stock, in useful sizes, at fair prices, and at consistent quality.
Retailers who get these basics right build something bigger than a good fresh department. They build dependence. For professional customers, that is the real test of fresh execution: not how the department looks, but whether they know they can count on it to keep their own business running.
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Find out more about UK grocery and foodservice wholesale.