The ability to react proactively to new trends appearing in the marketplace is an often overlooked but critical component to a successful food distribution business.
Discovering and focusing on trends as they happen can give a distribution company a leg up in a crowded and competitive market, and many companies are turning to ERP providers such as Prime FoodService, built within Acumatica, to bolster this side of their business.
Take, for example, the rise in frozen food consumption in the wake of the global health pandemic of the last year.
Between November of 2019 and November of 2020 frozen food consumption grew by 17.4% across the board, according to data provided by IRI and the International Dairy Deli Bakery Association.
Categories such as pizza and vegetables have seen a massive increase of 37%, while entrees and poultry have both seen increases of over 25%. This trend has not slowed down, as growth is also projected for 2021.
This trend has seen a rush on new solutions for packaging and shipping to meet the increased customer demand.
It has also led to a boom in cold storage construction projects.
Distributors who were not actively focused on discovering and following trends have been left lagging behind, putting their market share at risk due to not being able to provide what their customers are looking for.
A complete, agile ERP system such as Prime FoodService helps distribution businesses have greater viability into industry trends and offers them the platform to respond to them accordingly.
With powerful, in-depth dashboards, Prime FoodService offers food distributors greater visibility than ever before into their data, including sales trends. This greater visibility allows users to proactively spot trends, enabling them to act in time to take advantage of them, instead of having to react once the market has spoken.
Prime FoodService also offers a unique order guides functionality that offers highly tailored suggested items, allowing for greater capitalization on trends such as the current boom in frozen foods. Sales reps can pre-load possible upsale or cross sale items that are trending, allowing them to be on hand to suggest and immediately added to an order.
By employing an agile, modern ERP solution food distributors place themselves in the best position to identify and capitalize on industry trends, eliminating the need to re-actively search for new solutions on the fly.