The benefits of joining the right buying group

There are obvious commercial gains to joining a buying group. Cumulative buying power means independent regional wholesalers can compete with much larger national wholesalers to deliver the best products and prices for their customers. At Caterforce our mission is to help our members thrive by delivering the very best commercials and encouraging collaboration. Our members share best practice on everything from ecommerce platforms to ERP systems. This collaborative approach to sharing best practice is invaluable to our independent wholesalers.

We select our members carefully to ensure there is minimal competition or crossover and involve them in all decision making. From Board level through to Trading teams, Marketing, Sales, Finance and IT there is an openness and willingness to work together and support each other.

Our members are regional champions, proud of their heritage and fiercely independent. As a buying group we recognise this and help them nurture their individual identities.

The Caterforce creative team act as an extension of our members’ marketing teams supporting them with everything from flyers for sales teams to trade show stands and logo designs to monthly magazine production.

Recent customer research highlighted the importance of great imagery to bring products to life and increase sales. Therefore, we offer all our members 10 days a year photography in our in-house studio with expert Food Photographers, Stylists and Development Chefs.

Caterforce members are exclusive stockists of our four award-winning own brands – Chefs’ Selections, Eden Grove, Roast 440 and ProClean. Our dedicated Own Brand Buying and Marketing team ensure we deliver the best products at the best prices and sales are growing year on year.

In recent years, our members have made great leaps forward in becoming more environmentally friendly and socially responsible. They are all working to reduce their carbon footprint by installing solar panels and LED lighting, as well as introducing Euro 6 engines and electric vehicles. Several members have also dedicated large areas of land to tree planting as well as installing wind turbines. In addition to this many are introducing compostable packaging, returnable crates, enviro-catering disposables, and surplus stock redistribution.

At Caterforce we support members with their sustainability ambitions by driving forward improvements with our own brand products. We have removed all black plastic and over 80% of cardboard is unbleached. All our wite fish is MSC-certified. Our tuna is sustainably sourced. We only use sustainable palm oil and none of our products contain any GM ingredients or hydrogenated fats. In addition to this we insist upon full supply chain traceability with all products in this range and we are also asking all suppliers to agree to work towards some ambitious targets including making all packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025

We have big plans to develop our technology platforms in 2023 and will be launching a new website and intranet later in the year along with upgrades to our central rebate management and promotions platforms.