Food sucks (time) as home improvement gains in efficiency.
Two of the top 25 Shippers of Choice Award winners (announced earlier this week at The Future of Supply Chain summit) are in the home improvement sector. Part of the reason for their success was the control of wait times during the pandemic and a solid descending trend post-pandemic.
The SONAR chart above compares food distribution wait times to home improvement stores. Clearly, there is a continuing reduction in wait times at the home improvement chains and a widening gap between that sector and the food distribution sector.
There were also a few in the food sector (grocery and manufacturing) that won awards but no food distributors.
What is it with the food distributor category that makes it so inefficient? Why the lumpers all the time? Why “new wood”?
There aren’t random 15-foot rolls of bologna running through the system…
Nor are there sudden random shipments of 110-gallon corrosive olive oil totes.
I have never seen any food shipments in my life that require the application of the “Articles of Extreme Configuration” rule.
You could order and get 9.3 Uber Eats deliveries while waiting to unload at a food distributor.
Food for thought.
Read more articles from Michael “The Dude” Vincent
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