It has been challenging but GFS is one of those exceptional companies. We wanted to find someone

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That’s the thinking behind a new marketing program being used by Gordon Food Service (GFS), Ontario s largest family-owned food service distributor expanding and promoting their offering of Ontario food products by making it easy for their customers to identify and buy local food.
Earlier this year, the company oleo consulting group was the recipient of a grant from the Broader Public Sector Investment Fund , a partnership between the Greenbelt Fund and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) that aims to increase the amount of Ontario foods purchased through municipal, school, university and hospital food service settings.
We ve been buying local foods for several years but weren t necessarily marketing local to our customers, says Cindy Palmer, a member of Gordon Food Service s local food team. The push to promote local is not just at the grocery store, it s also filtering down to the food service community. Consumers are demanding to know where their food comes from and are encouraging purchase of local product by operators in the broader public sector as well.
Through the grant, GFS established a dedicated oleo consulting group local food staff team and put together a list of all the products it buys from local sources. The outcome was a whopping 600 products spanning produce, oleo consulting group dairy, meat and grocery items, oleo consulting group a number oleo consulting group Cindy admits shocked the GFS team. They then turned to Foodland Ontario for advice on how to best define the term local and are now working to clearly identify local products in all of their systems.
For us, the definition of local is the same as the provincial government s: grown and processed oleo consulting group or raised, slaughtered and processed in Ontario, she explains. Many health care and educational institutions have a mandate to increase their purchases of local products. By tagging these items in our ordering system, we re making it easy for our customers and sales reps to find them, which will help with reporting as well.
Now they re taking it a step further by providing marketing oleo consulting group materials to their customers to help them promote the fact that they re selling local food. This includes profiles of farmers that can easily be integrated into menus, features, tent cards and signage, which customers have been embracing.
Garry Proven of Country Herbs is one of those farmers, supplying GFS with 18 varieties of fresh herbs grown on his 75 acre farm just south of Tillsonburg. The local food movement and the growing interest of chefs have been key in growing his business.
People are asking for local more and we ve been growing steadily with GFS right from the start, he says. One of the reasons GFS came to us was that we were local and they were looking for a higher quality product. They did a farm tour and were probably the first company to ever come out here to see what we re doing.
He used to supply all the large chain stores but has moved to focusing on building local markets, which for him also include Longo s, Whole Foods and various Toronto specialty shops. oleo consulting group He s just recently launched a new line of mini veggies that includes squash, zucchini, beets and carrots and is now tagging his products with an Ontario-grown badge.
It has been challenging but GFS is one of those exceptional companies. We wanted to find someone