Welcome to the latest in our series of Supplier Community updates.
Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) Team Update
Single Point of Contact for Suppliers
Amie Thayer – Chesterfield NH Frozen Bread and Baked Goods Meat Alternatives Meats, Poultry and Seafood Breakfast Foods | Cindy Adamson – Rocklin, CA Perishable/Chill Beverages Cheese and Cheese Substitutes |
David Lotti – Providence, RI Grocery - Candy | Hector Muniz – Providence, RI Hispanic |
Kevin Calkins – Aurora, CO Grocery/NonFoods – Pet Food and Pet Care | Kiva Shogren – Iowa City, IA Perishable / Chill Yogurts and Cultures Miscellaneous |
Maureen Hines – Providence, RI Grocery – Beverages Juice, Nectars and Concentrates Carbonated Juice and Sodas Water | Nora Cline – Providence, RI NonFoods Cleaning and Supplies Paper Goods, Party and Office Supplies Housewares Clothing/Textiles |
Russell Winterroth – Aurora, CO Frozen Desserts Appetizers and Snacks Kids and Baby Food | Veronica Vanni – Providence, RI Grocery Salty Snacks – Chips, Pretzels, Rice Cakes Nuts and Dried Fruit Pickles, Olives and Sauerkraut |
Jason Walsh – Chesterfield, NH Frozen Fruits and Vegetables Lunch and Dinner Entrees Juices and Beverages Perishable/Chill Soy Foods and and Seitan Macrobiotic Foods, Tofu, Japanese | Joseph Roy – Providence, RI Kosher Grocery Pasta Pasta Sauces |
Additionally, we have added new members to our National Supplier Relationship Management Team:
Veronica Vanni comes to UNFI with over 20 years of sales and management experience within the Natural Foods Industry. She began her career as a retail manager and buyer for independent natural food stores. She moved on to be responsible for territory management and brand management for a leading natural broker. Expanding her expertise, she was hired by Kraft Foods as East Coast Natural Sales Manager for Balance Bar. Veronica's most recent position was Vice President and Chief of Sales and iCommerce Director for Taste for Life (Lifestyles Ink), a custom publisher of nutritional, natural, and organic lifestyle publications, retail support materials and literature.
Jason Walsh has been in the food/grocery industry for the past 10 years in various positions, including restaurant management, sales and most recently, procurement. Jason has been with UNFI for the past 2 years, handling procurement for the salty snack and specialty categories. He has also served as the customer captain for Publix Supermarkets. Prior to UNFI, Jason spent 6 years at C&S Wholesale in the procurement department. Jason is a New Hampshire native, and holds a BS in Business Management from Keene State College.
Joseph Roy has over 15 years of experience in the food industry, with a strong background in supermarket. For the past 5 years, Joe has been a buyer at UNFI with a heavy concentration on Kosher. Most recently, Joe was promoted to Lead Buyer and has managed significant day to day responsibilities for the procurement team. Prior to UNFI, Joe worked for Shaw’s supermarkets for 11 years, with the last 7 as a grocery manager.
We will continue to keep you informed as we progress in our single point of contact initiative. Our goal is to have a single point of contact assigned to all suppliers by late February 2013. At that time, we will communicate details of the remainder of these strategic moves as well as a comprehensive outline of category and supplier assignments.
Program Updates
2013 Marketing Programs Overview
Market Watch™
As UNFI’s Supermarket business continues to grow, our Market Watch™ program is a powerful selling tool for our Supermarket Sales Team. Using Market Watch, our team works with key retailers to incorporate your products into their seasonal programs. Each edition focuses on a variety of seasonal and promotional themes and is produced with the long lead times needed by supermarkets for their planning processes. Please click here for information on the Market Watch™ program and how to participate. Contact your SRM with any program-related questions.Instead of advertisements, we are offering the option to have an image included with your listing beginning with the September-October 2013 edition.
Upcoming Market Watch™ Deal Submission Deadlines:
September-October 2013 Edition: January 11, 2013November 2013-January 2014 Edition: March 15, 2013
New Distribution Centers
UNFI continues to invest significant resources into building out the most extensive and efficient natural, organic, and specialty distribution network in North America.
Announcing our newest Distribution Center in Sturtevant, WI
UNFI is pleased to announce a new distribution center to support the continued strong sales growth in our East Region! We have signed an agreement to construct a 425,000 square foot distribution center in the village of Sturtevant, Wisconsin which is just west of Racine, WI. Construction will begin in the spring of 2013, and we expect to begin distribution during the summer of 2014. Our new Wisconsin facility will support growth, eliminate outside storage expense and inefficiencies, and reduce the stress on our current capacity and associates during peak volume periods. New Denver CO Distribution Center
Scheduled to open in June 2013, UNFI's new, 553,000 square foot facility, in Denver is designed to meet the specific needs of natural, organic, and specialty products distribution, while also supporting our sustainability initiatives for energy efficiency and zero waste.
Supply Chain Transformation
- Optimize our customer experience
- Nurture our purpose and culture
- Transform our Supply Chain
- Enhance our processes
- Re-invent our technology
- Grow our business
Enterprise Information Management Project (EIM)
The Enterprise Information Management Program consists of two projects that are tightly integrated: Enterprise Master Data Management and Enterprise Information Warehouse. These projects will create new master data standards with new supporting processes, and build a new, best in class data warehouse, respectively. We are phasing the rollout of this effort to provide results as quickly as possible. The first results will be implemented in August 2013, producing an enterprise item number. The enterprise item number will be the same in UNFI’s east and west systems, enabling us to provide better customer service, to more efficiently onboard new, national customers and reduce the complexity of many customer and product oriented processes through new, national standards. There are tremendous efforts made on a daily basis to serve customers and suppliers, move products, and produce reports – we are confident this effort will greatly optimize these and many other processes in the future.
We'll be assembling a list of FAQs regarding our Enterprise Information Management Project and will send them along to you promptly. There will be more detailed communication as we move closer to August 2013 regarding rollout strategy and detailed execution timelines.
If you have questions or comments about UNFI's Enterprise Item Number project, please contact us at NewItemNumber@unfi.com.
Inventory Optimization (IO)
Here are answers to key questions you may have about the IO program’s impact to our supplier community:
How will this affect my sales to UNFI?
How will IO respond to my key retailer promotions?
For those retailers who forecast promotional demand with UNFI, IO will be better equipped to purchase against those demands.
How will IO handle bracket pricing?
IO will build to the best bracket available based on each distribution center’s volume.
- Communicate these coming changes as needed within your organization.
- Drive consistent and short order lead times – the key to the most efficient ordering and highest service levels to retailers.
- Lead a rigorous effort to consistently deliver a 98% or better fill rate on your orders.
Thank you for your support of UNFI. We welcome your feedback as we continue our focus on improving our processes and approach to ensure mutual success.
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