American Foods
Bridging the Gaps in the Export Retailer Supply Chain

Supply chains worldwide are recovering from pandemicinduced constraints, offering an optimistic outlook for the U.S. food industry. This gives food producers and retailers an opportunity to reinvent their supply chain operations, adding more value to their businesses and creating additional revenue options.

A trusted name in the food distribution industry, American Foods is ideally positioned to help producers and foreign retailers capitalize on dynamic market trends. It serves as a trusted partner for food producers, specializing in all avenues of food distribution. Team American Foods covers all aspects of the process, from consolidation and handling to documentation and USDAmandated sanitary inspections, enabling them to export cost-effectively.

On the flip side, American Foods helps foreign retailers across Latin America and the Caribbean, shipping to over 40 countries. They help US manufacturers access new markets while handling extended credit terms, removing risk from the vendor. At a time where most exporters are concentrating their efforts on trading bulk meats, American Foods invests in brand development, building markets deep and wide.

“Our strategic partnerships with some of the biggest producers enable us to take a step further in addressing foreign retailers’ supply chain needs. Vendors have less and less staff so we do the selling on their behalf, we visit the market, providing trainings and do the brand building country by country through retail execution,” says Eoghan O’Byrne, Sales Director, American Foods.

As a full-service export distributor, American Foods places cardinal importance on improving service for sensitive products like lunch meat and cheese, to lessen the risk of spoilage that often leads to significant losses for retailers. After all, too much inventory of one item can make it not likely to sell before expiry.

The company streamlines the consolidation process by working with retailers to take a broader assortment of items, selling the whole vendor portfolio vs. just the best sellers. The approach enables foreign retailers to fill containers with a variety of items instead of buying a single product in bulk, which optimizes clients’ supply chains.

“In a lot of foreign markets there is no IRI or Nielsen data which US vendors rely on, so we visit markets and work closely with our retailers to share those insights back to our vendors, to inform their business development strategies, while we support on the ground, in-market.” says O’Byrne.

American Foods then follows up with clients through a unique program where its team collaborates with producers and merchandisers to help retailers improve storefront execution, point of sales, promotional pricing, marketing, and brand development.

American Foods is also known for its custom repackaging services for club stores like PriceSmart. It creates new items by taking a single unit of turkey burgers and turning those into a dual-packed product (and vice versa). While most manufacturers now focus on reducing SKUs and eliminating products due to a lack of flexibility in production lines, American Foods has poised itself to help retailers add new products. The company buys individual products directly from the manufacturer, custom designs the box, adds labels and shrink wraps it as a new product. Instead of buying truckloads, this service allows club stores to be versatile with LTL volumes.

The immense value proposition of American Foods makes it a go-to for export retailers. It attributes all its success to a team from diverse backgrounds whose expertise continues to add value to its offerings. By representing some of the best brands in each category, it focuses on making those successful among its client base. In turn, producers reciprocate with needed support and prioritize export retailers, making American Foods a trusted partner for producers and retailers.