Salvage food brokers may not be known to many, given that it is a highly niche arena. A salvage food broker is nonetheless a very valuable and viable resource for food manufacturers, suppliers, and retailers during COVID-19, given the disruption to the entire food services industry.
And while it’s true that salvage food brokers are viable at all times, for companies not familiar with them, food liquidation services like these are especially important during a pandemic, when food business owners — food manufacturers, co-packers, suppliers, distributors, and even retailers — are in need of new opportunities to generate revenue while other income sources either vanish completely or are significantly impacted. In this post, we’ll discuss why salvage food brokerage companies are essential right now, plus a few strategies that restaurant owners and food distributors can use to minimize their losses during these unprecedented times.
Understanding the Food Salvage Industry
If a food product can’t be sold through traditional channels, it doesn’t mean that it has to go to waste. Large-scale inventory losses—whether they’re from an act of nature, like a fire or flood, or a global crisis like the coronavirus pandemic—can be mitigated through partnerships with salvage food brokers, which offer new channels for selling rapidly deprecating food assets or goods that might, for various circumstances, become unmarketable/saleable through the companies traditional sales channels.
It’s not just pandemics and other disasters that heighten the need for a company that handles food closeouts. Many food retailers use the services of a broker to offset losses from products that are no longer fit to sell off the shelves or to include certain products in food production. Overproduction and packaging changes are other common reasons companies use, or might seek to use the services of a company like Marvell Foods, which offers food surplus, excess food inventory, short-coded, or close-out food, commodity, and ingredients buying services.
Working with a closeout food liquidator allows restaurants, grocery stores, and other food retailers an opportunity to mitigate losses and earn revenue on food ingredients or products that might otherwise go to waste or be unsaleable. As consumer dining and food shopping patterns and behaviors have changed so dramatically, so quickly, generally speaking with a significant downturn due to social isolation issues, food companies, manufacturers, suppliers, and restaurateurs, among others, are feeling a profound impact on their revenue and bottom line. Any income that can be derived by using the services of a food salvage broker or food liquidator is a welcome relief to companies struggling to meet expenses.
Strategies to Mitigate Profit Losses
With the services of an overstock food brokerage or food liquidation company like Marvell Foods, restaurant owners and food distributors luckily have options to keep their businesses afloat and generate income. In addition to food salvage services, there are a number of strategies that they can use to reduce losses related to the coronavirus. Here are some places to start.
- Offer new purchase methods
When the pandemic first hit, many food retailers and restaurants were forced to quickly pivot to takeout and delivery. While these practices show some signs of slowing down, they do represent a way to “keep the doors open” and employees (albeit reduced staff) on the payroll. Reducing food costs by buying through a food brokerage company like Marvell Foods opens alternative avenues to not only keep the doors open, but also allow restaurants to offer lower-priced food items to meet a new economic and behavioral reality as the economy reels from the negative financial consequences of the pandemic.
- Revise, Reduce, Limit Product Offerings
As far as restaurants go, a revised menu with reduced product offerings can help to mitigate losses, and in a time of “soft sales,” less product means less waste if sales don’t meet expectations. Restaurants and distributors should be closely monitoring their product needs during this time as a way to adapt to the current climate and ensure they don’t buy more than they need.
- Store what can be used (or sold) later on
Food costs can be significant. And, if sales are off, storing food is a potential option. However, food storage can also be costly. For example, shipping, cold storage/warehousing food are a possibility, but there are the costs that go into all those moves and the monthly warehouse costs. With an uncertain future and possibly “best use by” dates rapidly approaching, it might be best to sell food products/ingredients now, if even at a loss, to avoid even further costs and deeper losses by holding on to food that might no longer be usable. Salvage Food services can be a lifesaver in a situation like this, allowing companies to recoup some costs and generate revenue instead of shelling out much-needed funds in a cash-flow, cash-crunch crisis situation many companies find themselves in today.
The Demand For Food Salvage is Growing
“The coronavirus has exposed the fragility of the food industry ecosystem,” says Marilyn Raybin, founder and President of Marvell Foods. “Around the world, food-related businesses are experiencing an increased need for salvage food services, and many are in desperate need of a solution,” says Raybin, whose thirty years in the food services industry offers a wide array of alternative sources to buy, sell, and distribute food, nationally and internationally.