YSK: Taylor Farms Iceberg Lettuce is sold under many different names

[u/hardasjello]

Why YSK, Taylor Farms sells their iceberg lettuce to many food stores using different names and you don’t need explosive diarrhea.

Here are some of the different names and stores that sell Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce

Earthbound - Taylor Farms

365 - Whole Foods

Simple Truth - Kroger/Fred Meyer

O-Organics and Signature Select brands - Safeway/Carrs

Greenwise - Publix

Simply Nature - Aldi

Marketside - Walmart

Good and Gather - Target

H.E.B Store brand

Trader Joe’s store brand

[u/samuelj264]

I think it’s higher than that? Between Sysco and US Foods, I thought those two companies covered 80% of all restaurants

Edit: did a fact check on myself. It’s around 28% by revenue.

Some sources say around 50% if restaurants, venues, schools, and hospitals use Sysco, US foods or PFG for some form of supply.
There are local and regional names like Shamrock, Gordon Foods services, Cheney Brothers than make up a lot of other areas.

My personal experience in restaurants is that most places have anywhere from 2-10 suppliers for different things.

For example, the local Mexican QSR I worked at had a scratch kitchen and things came from Sysco, US foods, Shamrock, a fish distributor, a beef distributor, a pork distributor, and a distributor for one time use plates and silverware, also gave to add in the Pepsi vendor, cleaning supply vendor, and the restaurant supply store for things like cambros and kitchen utensils.

[u/Waldo_Wadlo → u/samuelj264]

Sorry, I wasn't sure so I did a quick Google search that said roughly 20% market share. I may be off on that.

[u/RainMakerJMR → u/samuelj264]

Depends how you categorize it tbh, companies like coremark supply convenience food distribution and performance food group also has a large market share. Plus small local and region distribution makes up a large chunk of it, especially produce and bakery goods, then if you count ice cream and novelties, syscos share gets even smaller

[u/Caymonki → u/samuelj264]

PFG owns black river and a handful of other names they operate under. Sysco and US make up the big 3. They’re crushing the local market and buying everything up. Soon all our food will taste the same and if there’s issues with the supply lines it will collapse entire markets.

Competition is good for everyone except billionaires, so of course we can’t have it.

[u/samuelj264 → u/Caymonki]

I’m with you on this 90%. I worked in restaurants for 10 years.

The issue comes down to restaurant owners more than Sysco and US Food, et. al. Sometimes. I blame the big suppliers more tho.

The way the larger problem has worked out is that food costs have been going up, pushing restaurant owners to cut corners, so rather than making food in house, they turn to their suppliers’ premade products. Think appetizers, most restaurant will have the exact same mozz sticks, or onion rings, or flat breads, etc.

Where your local bar and grill used to make those from scratch it’s cheaper now to get the premade thing, and Sysco sells that because Sysco has bought up a number of premade producers.

This is the part where I will not rag on Sysco…

Sysco at its most basically is a delivery grocery store. Restaurant owners CAN go buy all really fresh ingredients and products from Sysco and have those delivered and make amazing house made foods, but they choose not to. WHY? Costs.

This is where is goes back to fuck Sysco. While there are still many local and regional suppliers to get high quality ingredients from, you could just have 1 or 2 companies come by with products and reduce your ordering complexity and get bulk discounts, aka Sysco. Therefore to save money restaurant owners lock into Sysco as a sole supplier and then give all the pricing power to Sysco, wherein Sysco controls that restaurant’s ingredient cost, and when the price of mozz goes up artificially to sell the higher profit margin, lower cost premade Sysco mozz stick, the owner makes the choice to go cheaper.

You then end up with restaurant owners en mass doing the same thing and all of a sudden you have an epidemic of hegemony in menus and tastes across many places.

I can almost for certain say that if you go to 3-4 local places near you that are not chains and are similar menu types and order the same menu item, they will all be identical because of this.

There isn’t a good solution either because restaurants are bad businesses for the business owner with razor thin margins. Unless there is some massive shift, it’s a race to the bottom.

[u/Wrong-Pension-4975 → u/samuelj264]

In Dec 2013, Sysco announced they'd buy U.S Foods, a merger that would mean (then) $65-B annual revenue, & massive clout over institutions - hospitals, restaurants, hotels, schools, etc.

Sysco Corp. was paying $3.5-B. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303560204579247881181477164  

Did that merger go thru?

At the time, Sysco had 425-K customers; Sysco [18%] & U.S Foods [9%] ran 27% of the distribution market.

3 in 2013/ '14 was 

Performance Food Group of Richmond, Va, with only a 5% market share.The rest was fragmented among Ks of local players.

I'd bet in 2020, many of the remaining "local players" bit the dust - the pandemic winnowed businesses ferociously.

[u/user2196 → u/Wrong-Pension-4975]

Did that merger go through?

No. Not sure why you're quoting all these numbers from 2013 but not even checking if they merged or not.

[u/samuelj264 → u/Wrong-Pension-4975]

Added and edit to my comment, you’re right, closer to 25-30% by revenue, it’s a fragmented space but US Foods and Sysco and PFG hit around 40% of restaurants nationwide in some form or fashion.

[u/timmy6169 → u/Wrong-Pension-4975]

They have made 27 acquisitions since 1985, but most recently they acquired Jethro Restaurant Depot for $29.1bn

[u/DCGuy511 → u/Wrong-Pension-4975]

The merger did not get approved. I don't see the point of posting about a failed merger.

[u/PKCO-NB → u/samuelj264]

There like 5 big ones. Sodexo and Uris (sp?) have huge markets as well.