Last month, we kicked off a four-part series about food industry businesses rescuing profits on problem inventory. This month, in part 2, read about a bakery’s excess inventory success.
Excess inventory can be tricky to manage. A canceled order or discontinued food product may result in still-good ingredients sitting in the warehouse. More importantly, every day that the product sits, the more value it loses.
A discontinued product creates excess frozen eggs
When a bakery discontinued one of its items, they were left with an ingredient they could no longer use — over 11,000 pounds of frozen eggs.
The purchasing manager wanted to move the product from their temperature-controlled warehouse quickly. The manager knew that the longer they held onto the eggs, the more money they stood to lose.
They contacted Ingredient Exchange to discuss options for selling the eggs and recovering some of their investment.
The good shelf-life advantage
Some products are easier to sell than others. Fortunately, the thirty-pound pails of frozen eggs came with a substantial shelf life. This increased the value of the ingredient, creating more opportunities to sell the discontinued ingredient.
Plus, the bakery was taking action early. With over nine months of remaining shelf life, the egg inventory would be more appealing to buyers.
* See more expiring inventory mistakes here
In addition to jump-starting the selling process, the bakery was able to send us the inventory verification documents a potential buyer would need to see.
With the documents on hand, the Ingredient Exchange team reached out to our vast network of buyers to find someone who could use the frozen-egg product.
Within a short time, we received feedback from a potential buyer — a food manufacturer interested in purchasing the eggs for use in cookie products. Moreover, having the verification documents ready to go allowed us to expedite the sale quickly.
Signed, picked up, and delivered
Over the next few days, we worked with the seller (and buyer) to finalize the transaction details. That included arriving at a price that would benefit both parties. We also arranged for the pickup and delivery of the product.
Within two weeks of the original offer, we completed the transaction and cleared the product out of the seller’s facility.
Note: When it comes to selling excess ingredients, a product might not qualify to re-enter the food supply chain due to the limited shelf life. In this situation, we help the seller find a non-food application.
The sooner the inventory owner acts, the better!
Like the frozen-egg inventory, if the product qualifies to re-enter the food supply chain, including having a substantial shelf life, the seller can receive a good return.
Also, the ingredient owner can rest easy, knowing that someone will take care of the details — from finding the right buyer and handling the logistics to delivering the product and check.
At Ingredient Exchange, we help food-industry clients rescue profits from their unusable inventory. Do you have excess ingredients you need to salvage? Let’s start the conversation today. Please give us a call: 314-872-8850
Sign up (above) for our once-a-month newsletter, and get the next ingredient rescue story delivered to your inbox.
