Unified Natural Foods Inc. sees the possibility of slow but steady volume growth from the sale of ethnic and gourmet items to independents and to bodegas in major metropolitan areas, Mark E. Shamber, the company’s CFO, told an investor audience Tuesday at the Jefferies Global Consumer Conference in New York.
“It’s going to be one of those categories where the growth will sneak up on you because we’re targeting independents and bodegas in [places like] New York, Chicago and San Francisco, and we’re going out and winning that volume,” he said.
“It might only be $500,000 to $1 million per customer per store, so it’s not like going out and winning supermarket business, where we may win $20 million or $40 million from one customer. It’s a customer where we may make $250,000 or $500,000, and if we get everything in the store, we may get to $1 million.
“So it takes a number of wins to really aggregate up, and on an annual basis, a year or two from now, we may have increased [overall] business by $25 million or $50 million by virtue of putting feet on the street and having our sales people targeting these types of customers, where our focus on the gourmet and ethnic side historically has been the supermarket customers.
“We’re really targeting independents whose buying may be split up among seven or eight different folks and [may involve] buying the deal of the week,” Shamber explained.
Asked to be more specific, Shamber said, “You go into a bodega in New York and they’ve got 100 SKUs of Italian, 50 SKUs of Hispanic and maybe a few German or Irish products, so we’re going in and trying to sell those categories. These customers are also carrying the natural and organic we sell that they buy from somebody else.

“So what we’re trying to do is leverage the fact they’re buying 1,000 SKUs — of which we sell 700 or 800 — from seven different distributors, and they’re getting the best price and promotions, but they’re not aggregating their purchases so they’re leaving money on the table. From our perspective, if you aggregate that volume all through us, we can offer a better price point than they’re getting individually from each of their distributors.”
Asked about non-GMO products, Shamber said, “The opportunity for growth comes in consumer awareness and interest in having a demand for non-GMO products.
“Within two-and-a-half to three years, Whole Foods will require that all products be labeled [on whether or not they contain GMOs], so I think interest continues to build for non-GMO, and you certainly see that impacting the big CPG companies who are pushing the government to create a standard and perhaps water down what the industry is looking for because they’re concerned they’ll have to label their products according to consumer perceptions about GMO, soybeans and things of that nature.”