Sell to Thrifty Foods Stores & Become a Thrifty Foods Vendor

Hey everyone, this is Karen Waksman, founder of Retail MBA. Today, we’re going to be talking about selling to Thrifty Foods. If you have a great consumer product that you think should be in their stores, this little training will walk you through what to do and how to get started. Please watch this video to the very end as we will be adding additional content to help you on your journey of selling to the stores. Also, please like, subscribe, and comment below. We appreciate you!

What is Thrifty Foods?

Thrifty Foods is a retailer that not a lot of people are thinking about because they are mostly located in Canada. The thing about Thrifty’s is that they are a retailer that has not that many stores that they’re responsible for. I think they have like 20 stores in Vancouver and some other places. However, they are owned by a corporation called Soby’s, which is the largest chain in Canada with well over 1500 stores.

How to Sell to Thrifty Foods

The first thing to do when selling to a grocery chain is to always find out who their main company is. This is because you could actually start out by selling to the smaller Thrifty Foods chain and then going to the larger Sobies chain, which could make you a lot of money.

When you are selling to a retailer that has multiple brands under one main company, that means that they’re usually working together and they’re all selling through their main Vendor Portal. This means that when a vendor becomes a vendor, they fill out a bunch of forms and they submit their information and then they get a vendor number. They’re in their system as a vendor. The thing is, is that that vendor number might work for the other chains that they own. So if you went directly to say a Thrifty Foods and submitted your product to them, following our hopeful instructions as we have time-tested and proven methods on how to sell to these retail chains, and you submit your product to them and then you get a vendor number to the smaller chain and the Canadian area, then you could conceivably go to Sobies and say, “Hey, I’m already in your system and I could be a vendor very easily because I’m already selling to Thrifty Foods.”

Why does this matter? Because if they’re sharing the same system, the buyer at Sobies doesn’t have to actually fill out a lot of forms in order for you to become a vendor. Big chain stores tend to be busy and they don’t always want to fill out forms to submit new vendors. A lot of times it’s a lot of work for them and so they sometimes pass on products because they don’t really want to do that extra paperwork. But you’re saving them a lot of time by already being in their system.

It’s usually a little bit easier to go after the smaller chain first, and then the bigger chain. If this doesn’t work, you can try Sobies and then go back to Thrifty Foods. The idea here is that they all share the same software systems typically for vendors and that could benefit you tremendously. There obviously will be additional things you gotta submit, but that is a great way to get started with selling to these retail chains.

Local Buying Programs

The next thing is if you are willing to go to Canada and walk around, you can find out if they have local buying programs. Most grocery chains have the ability to buy on an individual level because they’re dealing with perishable foods. Obviously, if you are owning a grocery chain, you don’t want the food to go bad, so you definitely need vendors to be able to buy from very quickly and so forth. So being able to sell to one individual store is usually possible with grocery chains.

So something to consider is going to the store manager and saying, “Hey, I’d love to sell to you locally.” A lot of times they have the ability to buy on a local level. All chains typically have corporate buyers, but sometimes they have local buyers as well for one individual store. The reason that’s interesting to you is because you don’t always have to go and sell to all their stores. Sometimes that scares prospective vendors because they don’t want to overwhelm themselves and sell to tons and tons of stores. So the idea of selling a one individual store sounds pretty exciting to people.

Distributors

Going to a grocery chain, you’re always going to possibly deal with a distributor. Distributors tend to work with grocery chains closely. This isn’t the case for other industries, but for groceries, a distributor basically manages a lot of the relationships with the vendors. So don’t be alarmed, but you might have to deal with distributors when working with the grocery chain. And if you could work with a grocery, that could be a way to get in the door.

The reason I mentioned this is the distributor will take a piece of the action. They’re going to ask for some revenue, obviously, in exchange for their efforts. Usually, it’s 20 to 30 percent of your bottom line would have to go to the distributor. Work with them, but they are the ones who are managing the relationship with the corporate retailer. Because of the fact that with groceries and food, they really need streamline solutions for their stuff to get into stores fast, so that they don’t lose out a lot of money if the food goes bad or whatever. So distributors tend to manage all of the shipping and the distribution and all the stuff into their stores.

Conclusion

So those are some things to think about in regards to selling to Thrifty Foods. In general, going to a grocery chain, you’re always going to possibly deal with a distributor. If you want to learn how to do all that, we explain everything in detail in our time-tested and proven systems at RetailMBA.com. Everything we teach, we have tested ourselves, and we would love the opportunity to help you get into chain stores in the fraction of the time cost that you deserve.

This is Karen Waksman from Retail MBA. I hope these little golden nuggets helped you. If you want to learn more, click on the links below or go to RetailMBA.com. Thanks so much!