When choosing fruit and veg suppliers for your supermarket or business, you need to know that the fruits and vegetables they offer are of excellent quality. This is because it is essential for promoting your fresh produce in the market to your customers. There is no point in selling poor quality produce which will likely lead to losses or even worse boot you out of the supermarket chain.
Here are some ways to ensure that suppliers provide high-quality products:
Using independent auditing fruit and veg suppliers, these businesses conduct regular audits on their farms to check if their farming practices are sustainable, environmentally friendly and also healthy. Physical inspections are also carried out by them on their farms to examine proper hygiene conditions at all times while the farm is supplying the supermarkets.
Ask your fruit and veg suppliers what facilities they have in place to ensure that there is no contamination of their fruits and vegetables while passing through several stages of storage, transportation and packing. Supermarkets require suppliers to adhere strictly to the food standards and guidelines which means that products cannot pass through any levels of production or packaging before being subjected to intensive testing for contaminants like pesticides, fungi, insects etc. The fruit and veg suppliers must provide invoices for all fruit and vegetables supplied which list out how it was grown on farms, when it passed all safety checks before being packed etc.
Visit the fruit and veg supplier’s farm to check out its storage conditions before placing an order. For fresh produce suppliers, this is usually done once a week by supermarkets or their agents. It is important to note that not all farms have a facility for the same and you should therefore confirm whether they have one or not before going ahead with any orders. The storage facility should be free from contaminants like bacteria and fungi which can affect the quality of your fruits and vegetables in time.
Check what type of packaging your fruit and veg supplier uses when supplying fruit and vegetables in bulk (in packs like boxes, plastic containers etc). Since most supermarkets require the supplier to pack the products in original factory packing, it is that your supplier sources them from well-known factories and packs the goods before transporting. This is important since it ensures that your produce always has a long shelf life with no signs of damage or contamination from the moment they arrive in supermarkets warehouses until they are taken to the shelves by customers for buying.
Ask whether your fruit and veg suppliers can provide you with regular feedback on how their fruit and vegetable products are faring out there. Regular updates can help you adjust your order quantities as needed because if they notice there is less demand for some types of fruits and vegetables; they might give preference to ones which do not require too much care throughout transportation etc. If they notice that some products sell out faster than others more orders should be made.
Ask your fruit and veg suppliers what kind of distribution channels they use to transport their products to the other businesses. If you are supplying different types of fruit and vegetables, it is advisable that they are transported separately because each type has different storage requirements throughout the supply chain.
With the threat of food fraud and contamination, it is important to ensure that your fruit and veg suppliers are reliable. Check these above checklists before finalising any supplier agreements for your supermarket.
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