Every football coach watches the other team's game film. It is the closest thing to reading their playbook, and no serious team skips it.
The big three broadliners publish their game film four times a year. It's called an earnings call, and most independent distributors never listen to one. We think that is a mistake, because this summer Sysco, US Foods and Performance Food Group all told investors some version of the same thing: the customer they most want to grow with is the independent restaurant. In other words, your customer.
Look at what each of them chose to highlight for the quarter that ended in June. Sysco said local case volume, its term for the independent business, grew 2.6% in the quarter, and that local growth went from 0.5% in the first half of its fiscal year to 2.9% in the second half. It is targeting roughly 2.5% local case growth for the year ahead. US Foods said independent restaurant cases grew 5.1%, against 1.9% for its total cases, and called it the 21st straight quarter of gaining share with independents. Performance Food Group said independent cases grew 8% in the quarter, or 5.8% without acquisitions, against 4.1% for its foodservice business as a whole. Independents are now 43% of its foodservice sales.
Those numbers would be fine news in a growing market. This isn't one. PFG's own management said restaurant traffic was negative every month of its fiscal year.
Here is the thing many independents don't stop to consider. When restaurants are seeing fewer guests, and three national distributors are all growing their independent business faster than their total business, those cases are coming from somewhere. They are coming from share, and a lot of independent restaurant share has always belonged to independent distributors. That isn't a reason to panic. It is a reason to stop assuming the broadliners only care about the chains.
The more interesting part of the film is the playbook. Sysco described an AI tool called AI 360 that points its sales reps toward selling opportunities, including moving customers onto Sysco's own brand, which is now 46.4% of its local sales. US Foods said a tool called Visit Assistant Insights sent its sellers more than 700,000 customer-specific insights in its first six weeks. US Foods is also building Pronto, a small-drop delivery service aimed at independents that it expects to bring in about $1.3 billion in sales this year. Put plainly, they are using software to make their reps behave more like yours: better prepared for every visit, more aware of what each account buys and quicker to spot an opening.
This is where the uncomfortable part comes in. For decades, independents have said their edge is the relationship: the rep who knows the chef, the customer service person who knows the account, the flexibility a national company can't match. That edge is real. But the broadliners just told investors, in some detail, how they plan to close it. A rep with a good tool and a full picture of the account can fake a fair amount of relationship. Not all of it, but enough to win a price-sensitive chef in a slow year. The independent who answers that with "our customers love us" is betting on loyalty in a year when operators are counting every dollar.
So where should independents fight? Not on private label scale or national pricing, because that is a game you won't win. Fight where the big 3 are still weakest. First, responsiveness, meaning how fast a chef gets a real answer at 6am from someone who knows the account. Second, judgment, meaning the ability to make the call on a substitution, a credit or a delivery change without three layers of approval. Third, memory, meaning knowing that this customer hates a certain brand, pays late every December and always pays in January. The broadliners are building tools to give their reps exactly those three things. The independents who win will give their own people the same advantage, without losing what made them good in the first place.
The bottom line is simple. Sysco and the others report again in the coming weeks. Listen to one call or read one transcript, and pay attention every time they say "independent" or "local." They are not talking about some abstract market. They are talking about the restaurants on your routes. At Burnt, we think the best answer to their film is to make sure your own team never walks into a visit unprepared.