Third ROUTE TO MARKET meeting, organized by the Food Service Institute (FSI)

Barcelona hosted this meeting, at the end of last November, which had the collaboration of Fedishoreca, the association of distribution companies specialized in serving foodservice and whose agenda of interventions had digitalization as a late motive. The market institute, UVE Solutions, also collaborated in organizing the meeting.

A hundred delegates from distribution companies and brand manufacturers that have a significant market share in the foodservice sector attended the meeting, presenting their advances in digital, Lactalis, Findus, Nestlé and Coca Cola on behalf of the latter. and Serhs, Euroestrellas, Aldisa and B-Grup by the former.

Special consideration involved the intervention of the Chief Operating Officer of Metro AG, parent of the Makro group in Spain.

The discussions and networking enriched the knowledge provided by the speakers, achieving the planned objective of materializing new areas of collaboration between one part of the supply chain in the foodservice sector.

Además, la conjunción en el seno del F.S.I de estas empresas, reunidas en sendas asociaciones empresariales, tales como Greco para los fabricantes marquistas como Fedishoreca para los distribuidores especializados, facilitará el follow-up de las conclusiones del encuentro. Cabe recordar que Fedishoreca , a través de sus asociaciones territoriales, como ADISCAT en Catalunya, agrupa a más de 600 distribuidores del canal horeca representando a España en CEGROBB, confederación europea de asociaciones de mayoristas de bebidas.

Fedishoreca's agenda of activities includes analyzing and trying to solve current problems, such as lack of personnel, loss of professional experience or learning and training of different trades; or national and international regulations, which require the different actors in the supply chain to make significant investments. 

On the other hand, with regard to mere distribution, weak points are the lack of distributors, or digitalization, discussed at the III Route To Market Meeting, and where the sector, still very traditional, has high costs for training, becoming more technical, update. To both issues, we should add the impact on the activity of Fedishoreca companies, of the regulations to make cities more sustainable, which is affecting the fleets of delivery vehicles and will generate their urgent renewal.