Sustain • Good Food Enterprises • Food Co-ops toolkit • Fruit & vegetable suppliers
Local wholesalers
Most towns and cities will have one or more local wholesalers that supply largely to the catering and retail trade.
Advantages
The main advantage with local wholesalers as with wholesale markets is that they offer a wide range of produce and so you will probably be able to get everything you want in one place.
Some fruit and vegetable wholesalers sell a small amount of organic produce but there are also a number of wholesalers across the country that specialise in only supplying organics. These include:
Langridge Organic
Choice Organics
Evergreen Organics
Watson and Pratts
Phoenix Organics
Local wholesalers also generally offer free delivery and will deliver quite small amounts if it you are in their current delivery routes.
Disadvantages
If you are interested in locally produced food wholesalers may not be your best option as although many wholesalers sell some local and UK produce they usually do not promote this and it is hard to tell from product lists where produce has been grown or raised
As with many other suppliers wholesalers will generally prefer to deliver in whole boxes and if they have to split a box or supply only a few of each item they will charge a lot more for this than a whole box. It is not untypical for a local wholesaler to put on a 20% mark-up, for smaller amounts meaning that it will be harder for you to offer produce at very affordable prices.
To find more useful food co-op related information visit our homepage
Food Co-ops toolkit: The Food Co-ops Toolkit will give you all the information you need to set up your own food co-op.
