At Cheeky we have had the honour of working with one of the leading foodservice distributors of UK – Vegetarian Express.
In our 3 years of supply relationship, I have worked closely with Rich Manning, Purchasing & Supply Chain Director at Veg Express.
So I sat down with Rich to explore his insights into the foodservice industry from the distributors point of view, and how suppliers can identify new product opportunities and approach & work with leading foodservice distributors.
Please tell us about your role at Vegetarian Express
Firstly and foremostly my role to direct and support my incredible team. I am firm believer that if you surround yourself with talented people, as I have the privilege to work with, the majority of the role is associated with mentally supporting the team and the minority is technical elements of the job.
The Purchasing and Supply Chain team at Vegetarian Express manage over 1,300 products, across all 3 temperature categories, collaborating with over 140 supply partners. We are proud to work with a supply network of mostly small medium enterprise (SME) businesses. For VE, we value the flexibility and dynamism that small operators can offer, it is especially important as we strive to curate a highly differentiated, quality led product portfolio.
How is your Ambient, Chilled & Frozen distribution handled?
We have a central distribution model, so everything is currently held in our Watford depot. We are probably at the last 12 months of capacity at this site so we will likely move to a secondary depot model – something in the north and south because of where we are in our evolution. Most modern wholesaler have multi temperature depots which makes foodservice distribution more efficient in terms of picking and packing from one location.
We operate a hub and spoke model, so everything is picked and packed at the hub which is our Watford depot. And then moved further to the spokes.
