Turning Efficiency into Profit: A New Playbook for Food Distributors

Running a food distribution business is a juggling act. Every day there’s product to move, trucks to load, customers calling, and a clock that never stops ticking. Whether you’re managing one warehouse or five, the goal is always the same: get the right product to the right customer at the right time — and do it without blowing your margins.

But easier said than done, right?

At BFC, we spend our days talking to operators just like you — owners, warehouse managers, buyers — who are trying to run efficient operations in an industry that isn’t exactly forgiving. We’ve learned a lot about what’s working (and what isn’t) across small and mid-size distributors as well as the industry giants.

Here are a few things we see top-performing distributors doing to turn efficiency into profit:

1. Get the Process Right First, Then Measure It

It’s easy to get fixated on pushing the gas, believing “faster” is the only answer. But speed without a solid foundation just means you make expensive mistakes more quickly. The real key to efficiency starts with process, documentation, and training.

Before you worry about optimization, you have to nail the fundamentals: do you have clear, written process for receiving, replenishment, and picking? Does everyone on the floor, from the new hire to the veteran know the agreed-upon way to do their job?

Once the right process is in place, then—and only then—can you accurately measure it. The top distributors we see don’t just watch a number; they use key performance indicator dashboards so they can diagnose problems across different aspects of their operation. Having clear visibility into the “where” and “why” for every delay is what let’s you diagnose real problems in your operation, and coach your team to fix the process.

With those dashboards you can benchmark your performance. From top food distributors utilizing BFC we see 180+ picks per hour, less than 1 mispick for every 10,000+ picks, and scan percentage at 98%. Do you know how your warehouse or overall operation stacks up?

Get your free assessment on efficiency and profitability today!

2. Make Small Improvements, Consistently

It’s easy to feel like you need a massive overhaul. But the distributors who win are usually making small, continuous improvements. A few seconds saved in picking, a few less mispicks per week, a route optimized for fewer empty miles — they add up fast.

We just talked about top distributors achieving 180+ picks per hour, but let’s say you’re at 100 picks per hour right now. With some minor improvements you could likely even make a jump to 120 picks per hour, which can amount to a huge savings over the course of a month, quarter, or year!

The reality: Food distribution will always be complex. But it doesn’t have to be chaotic. With the right visibility, a few process tweaks, and tools designed for your world (not generic warehouses), you can move product more efficiently and protect your margins.

Takeaway: Start by auditing where your delays happen most — receiving, replenishment, picking, or delivery. Then tackle the biggest bottleneck first. Small wins compound.

3. Tighten Your Receiving & Replenishment Processes

Receiving and replenishment is where a five-minute delay becomes a five-hour problem for your night crew. This is the moment product hits the dock, and it is arguably the most important part of your entire operation.

We see two major problems repeatedly drain the efficiency (and profits) of distributors here:

1. The Flawed Check-In: The product is moving fast, the driver is waiting, and the manager is dealing with a crisis. This pressure creates human error. That's how a critical lot number is missed, an expiration date is ignored, or a catch-weight is recorded incorrectly. Missing these details at the dock means your inventory is incorrect, which results in pickers finding an error potentially hours later. When transitioning from a human-based data capture to systematic catchweight and date capture with scanning we often see a 75% reduction in errors.
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2. The Replenishment Bottleneck: Are your selectors constantly traveling to an empty pick slot, or worse, waiting ten minutes for a pallet to be dropped? That lost time is the direct result of a "manual" replenishment brain. The best-performing distributors move beyond simply filling spots when they look low. They use smart logic that anticipates picking velocity and demand—ensuring the right amount of product is staged precisely when the pickers need it. Typically a selector is a few slots away from where they are supposed to go. If the product isn’t there, the runner could be coming from a totally separate part of the wearehouse to get there, then go all the way back to the dock to merge it. If you take the baseline of 180 cases an hour, that’s ~20 seconds a case. For someone to go back to that slot to grab a case could easily be 2 minutes, which adds up.

The complexity of these two steps is difficult for even the most tenured warehouse employees to manage manually. That's why the top food distributors we work with demand real-time inventory visibility. They use a system that helps track, validate, and optimize their entire inbound workflow, making the complex process manageable and accurate.

4. Measure Driver and Route Performance Like You Measure Warehouse KPIs

So far we’ve talked a lot about the warehouse floor, but measuring driver and route performance is critical. Too often, the delivery side is treated as the “last mile black box,” where trucks leave the dock and leaders don’t have visibility into delivery.

The reality is, a driver’s success is tied directly to your margins. If they have delivery errors or miss stops it impacts their hours, driver morale, and your customer relationships.

Leading distributors focus on giving their drivers the tools to execute routes efficiently without errors. This means moving past paper and a clipboard and focusing on proof of delivery and visibility.

When you use a tool (like BFC Deliver) that eliminates costly errors and ensures your drivers are effective and efficient on every single stop.

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