Packed Out-The Birth of Modern Day Broadline Food Service Distribution

Now granted the US economy grew a lot between the 1960s and 1990s, but if the numbers are correct food distribution in 1965 was a $9 billion dollar a year industry.

In 1995 the us food distribution industry was a $124 billion dollar a year business. US Food Service (US Foods or at that time JP Food Service) 55% of it's business was institutions and independents and 45% of it's business was chain restaurants. I would think in 1965 45% of SE Rykoff's business was not chain restaurants.

 

I know Kraft and Sara Lee were both big in the whole sale food business in the 1970s and 1980s, what I think happened was and it's the antithesis of this controversial thread, but the market changed and shifted because of places like Pizza Hut and Red Lobster so on and so fourth and why would all of a sudden these companies that have been around forever suddenly all start merging and creating a brand new company with a new logo and everything? It's because the entire landscape was changing and they needed to change with the times. GFS in 1988 used to send 2 sets of doubles to Cleveland every night that was it. 4 trailers. In 2015 they were sending over 20 something trailers to Cleveland.

What's interesting is you hear a lot from people who worked for CF or any of the big legacy LTL companies back in the 1970s and 1980s, but you hear almost nothing from people who worked for the big food companies back in that era. They were around and were always around, but not like today. Back in those days it was only a couple sets of doubles a night and that was it. To date I don't think I've ever had anyone come on any forum and say yeah I was a driver at SE Rykoff in 1976 and this is what it was like. I've never seen it happen.

Now a days these food companies there shuttle runs and schedules are as big as some LTL companies. There city route operations rival that of some LTL companies. One of our drivers at GFS started at Sysco Cleveland in like 1990 and he said in 1991 Sysco was moving to what would have been there bigger warehouse on Aurora Road in Bedford, Ohio which they have since moved out of and moved into an even bigger spot in 2005. But why in 1991 was Sysco moving to a bigger warehouse? Because the whole broadline food business particularly the restaurant industry was going into massive expansion in those years and up until this goofy virus was on fire until earlier this year. Half the ads for trucking jobs are for food companies or were.

 

Stupid question time, but I have to ask. With the trailer loaded backwards, did you then obviously have to run the route then backwards, which probably caused an entire host of issues.

 

Haven’t had one of these in a while

 

Here’s a picture of some of the marvelous products manufacturers and today’s modern distributors are selling. I bought 3-1/4 pounds of this cooked bacon to try.

This stuff is amazing the versatility of it and the cook and performance of it.

I wanted to try it and it’s been an amazing product so much easier then cooking raw bacon and with less grease and waste too just like it says, I love it. Just shows you how far stuff has come over the past 100 years when this business was in its infancy till now a days.