Why Most Food Brokers Struggle to Deliver on Their Promises

Nick: 00:00:02

There are a million ways to make money in the food service industry. You just have to find one.

On the Titans of Food Service podcast, I interview real life movers and shakers in the food game who cut through all the noise to get to the top. My name is Nick Portillo and welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast. Let's jump right into it.

The biggest mistakes I made as a food broker cost me business, but they also taught me lessons that changed everything for me.

Today I'm breaking down three hard lessons I learned about market coverage, execution and relationships so that you don't have to make the same mistakes. Welcome back everyone to the Titans of Food Service. Thank you again for joining me. Okay, I have to ask.

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And, and your support and help really goes so far in achieving that goal and that dream of mine. So you again, if you leave me a five star review, that would be epic. Thank you. Okay, we're gonna, I'm gonna pick a little bit on food brokers today.

That's right, I'm a food broker. So I'm gonna pick on myself and hopefully get a laugh at it.

But hopefully you also learn some, some valuable lessons because this is not just for food brokers. This is just for food brands in general, Food manufacturers, food distributors, anybody in the food ecosystem. Okay. Hard truth food brokers.

Sometimes we over promise and under deliver. Sometimes we do it all the time depending on the food broker. I know this because I've been there.

I've been in this business for 10 years now solely as a food broker. I know exactly how these conversations go with manufacturers. I know the talking points. I've been there, I've done that. I've learned the hard way.

If you promise something, let me tell you, my friend, you better do it, you better deliver or better get close to it, or if you can deliver, pivot and give a good reason why and find something that's equally as beneficial to the manufacturer so that you can continue that Relationship forward. So I'm going to share on this episode three major mistakes that I've made as a broker.

And maybe it, maybe you'll see it'll translate to you and how it has affected your life or professional life in food service sales. So I'm going to share three major mistakes. What they cost me and the lessons that I learned and how I use those to turn around my business.

So the first one is not understanding and not having enough market coverage.

I remember one of our, when we first started out, in the first two or three years of our business, we got this, I mean, once in a lifetime partnership with a national broadliner. It was a game changer. Everyone was high fiving each other. It was so exciting, it was exhilarating. But we knew deep down we're a small company.

I mean, we didn't have enough people to service, you know, the needs of this gigantic national broadliner. It was a dream opportunity. But what little Portillo sales and marketing. Good luck, dude. I don't think so. It's going to be super hard to do it.

And we realized pretty early on, I mean, almost instantly that we didn't have the reach or the team size. We definitely didn't have the commissionable resources, AKA dollars to hire more people to be able to service it.

And because of that, we were stretched too thin. We're trying to keep up with the demands of this national broadliner. We're trying to continue to build our business.

We're trying to maintain the relationships with the manufacturers that we had and the other distributors in the marketplace. I mean we weren't. And it was a, it was the wrong, it was just the wrong time. It really was. We were stretched too thin. We said, yes, we can do it.

We've got this. We're all in. We're super excited. But you know what? We, in the end, we had to walk away. It was too big and we knew that going in it cost us clients.

It hurt our reputation a little bit in the industry for a little bit. Lesson learned. Market coverage is crucial.

If maybe you're in a food service manufacturer role, you're only, you have to look at the size team that you have and the reach that you have when you fly in, let's say you're living in Idaho and you fly in to make a present presentation in Texas. Realistically, are you going to be able to follow up with that operator or that opportunity or that distributor that you just met with?

Are you giving that, are you promising to them things that you know you can't deliver on sometimes providing less is a lot more.

Building that trust, building that, that relationship and that rapport goes a long way than saying, yeah, we can do this and we could do this and we could do that and we do all these things over here as well. And knowing darn well you can't. As soon as you leave that meeting, you're gonna have to enter in your calls into the CRM system.

You have to start following up with emails. You're putting out this fire over here. You gotta answer that question over there. Do you really have the bandwidth? Think about it.

Sometimes under promising or not promising at all is maybe, might be a better way to do it. That's the lesson that I have learned is, hey, let's level set. I'm not going to promise you the world.

I'm going to tell you what I can or cannot do and just be upfront about it. And then you could take, take it or leave it from there. And a lot of times they still take it.

Mistake number two was failing to execute a client sales plan. I mean, in the broker business, we, I mean, if you think about the, the main functions of a broker, achieve the sales plan, introduce new innovation.

I mean, you know, sales, baby, that's the business we're in. We're building the brand, execute the plan, build the brand and, and report back successes and market intelligence, you know, those types of things.

know, here's a good example.: 2019

It was a, it was a, it was a protein company, fantastic products, I mean, super innovative what they were doing. And they had business out in our marketplace and we, we said, you know, we could take that business, we're going to grow it.

Now they had declining sales. So we not only had to build a strategy to grow the business, we also had to have a strategy to stop the bleeding as well.

So two different parts, two different things happening simultaneously, and you know what? We said, we can do it. We're going to go all in. You're our biggest client. This is going to be great. They look to us to fix their problems.

They look to us to grow their business. And we just didn't have the horsepower to do it. We just didn't have the team and the market coverage and the size to be able to do it.

We failed to execute the sales plan. This is not something that's, you know, novel to a food broker either. It happens all across food service Sale. It happens. Let me say this.

It happens in every single sales industry where we say, yeah, I can do that. And then you don't. Or there's a plan set out in front of you and you get sidetracked.

You go on tangents, or you just don't have the bandwidth or whatever it is and you don't fulfill the sales plan. That's how you get terminated. That's how you build a bad reputation.

So sometimes the lesson learned is, hey, we need to make sure that we have the right team in place to be able to achieve the sales plans of our clients. We need to define who are our core customers. As a broker, I can't just take every single food brand under the sun that calls my number.

I can't do that. It would stress me out way too thin.

We need to focus our efforts instead spreading ourselves too thin onto the brands that actually make sense for us. It's the same thing on the manufacturing side and the distributing side.

I can go out and get a thousand customers, but maybe sometimes having the right 10 customers can outdo what a thousand can do. You'd be surprised. And you know what? At the end of the day, you wouldn't. You may not feel as overwhelmed as well as execution.

It's not just about effort. It's not just about being loud and passionate. It's about having the right strategy.

Strategy and the right resources in place to make sure that you can achieve it. And then the third mistake that, that I've learned from is not. Not. Wow, here we go. Just fumbling the words. Any word longer than like four letters.

You ever those days, like, it's just like, it's hard to say these words. Not prioritizing the right relationships. When we started Portillo sales and marketing, we were nimble. Woo. We were nimble. We're fast.

We could move so fast. But we weren't focusing on strategic account relationships.

So because we didn't do that, it was harder to deliver results, it was harder to bring on bigger clients, and it took longer to build our reputation. It's a, it's a lot easier to go to your mom and pops, you know, in your local neighborhood and go show them products.

You know, their barrier to entry is a lot smaller. They're, you know, if they're only going to buy two cases a week, it's not a huge commitment.

But if I'm gonna go out there and spend time selling, I need to spend time on the right relationships. I'm not saying their mom and pops are not important. They're critically important to the communities that they're in.

But on the sales side, we need to move pounds. We need cases that be flowing and churning within distribution. Super, super important.

I gotta go find strategic accounts, I gotta find restaurant chains, large casinos, large hospitality venues, large entertainment venues, so on and so forth, places that can buy my product in large volumes. That's where I need to focus my time. When we first started out, we were anybody and everybody. We'd call on all of them.

And we found over time that's just not sustainable because a lot of times our teams would start to take the easier route and go towards the smaller, smaller opportunities because they were easier, faster wins. It made you feel good when you can. When you can, you know, knock out a few of them all within a short period of time.

But the longer ones, the bigger ones take longer periods of time. Like, prioritize your time there. They may take longer, they may be more difficult. The language that they're speaking is more elevated.

You know, they're talking about logistics and pricing and rebates and all these types of things. But it pays off. I'm telling you. That's a big mistake we made early on is not having those big relationships.

So again, you don't need relationships with everyone. You just need the right ones. So how these relationships, how they changed our business? The best brokers, they don't just sell, they build trust.

They build trust with you as a manufacturer, or you as a distributor, or you as an operator. And trust comes from consistently delivering on what you promise. Not getting stretched too thin.

Understanding who my core customer is, understanding the capabilities of myself as a human, understanding the capabilities of my company, you know, those types of things, that's how you do, that's how you build trust, is when you deliver on what you promise. So some actionable takeaways for brokers or for sales reps.

Anybody in the food service industry who are on the sales or marketing sides, be realistic. Align your execution strategy with your resources. Invest in relationships that truly drive sales.

So to recap, market coverage, execution and relationships, if you get these wrong, I'm telling you, you're probably going to struggle. If you get them right, you're going to build a business that clients can trust and depend on. I'm telling you, I've seen it firsthand.

I've been doing this now for 10 years. My first five are drastically different than my last five. I would take my last five over the first five, first five, any day of the week.

So my challenge to you as the listener, have you ever worked with a broker? Now, let's not point out the broker, okay? We'll be nice on the brokers.

Have you ever, have you ever been in a position where you've over promised or under delivered or made one of these mistakes yourself? If so, I'd love to hear your story. You know, leave me a comment, shoot me a note, whatever. I'd love to learn more. I'm. I'm a student of the game.

Thank you again for listening. And if you could be leave me a five star review that would truly mean the world.

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