Innovative Food Holdings announces contract with distributor

Innovative Food Holdings, a national seller of gourmet specialty foods to professional chefs, announced a new contractual partnership with a top five U.S. broadline distributor partner and the completion of the associated technology integration. In addition, the company announced the launch of the Cheney Brothers business, after a successful technology integration.

First, the new partner contract is with a top-five U.S. broadline distributor. This new contract governs the terms of a deep partnership, and will introduce the company’s catalog to the distributor’s primary website and sales channel. With the technology integration already complete, the news marks the launch of the business, with orders and products already actively flowing.

Second, the company is announcing the launch of the Cheney Brothers business. After meeting an aggressive integration timeline, IVFH can now sell its thousands of specialty foodservice items directly to Cheney Brothers customers through the Cheney Brothers Stock Room drop ship website.

Both partnerships largely rely on IVFH’s drop-ship platform, the majority of which consists of a network of highly unique, well-vetted vendors, allowing the company to build and scale these businesses with little investment in infrastructure, inventory, or expenses. As both of these new businesses begin to ramp up, the company expects them to begin contributing to its sales growth in the second half of the year.

Bill Bennett, chief executive officer of IVFH, remarked, “This new contract and these new business launches are an exciting step forward in demonstrating the growth potential for IVFH. As we mentioned on our recent earnings call, we’ve been highly focused for months on opportunities to expand our profitable, asset-light drop-ship offering, and it’s great to see these efforts begin to bear fruit. Most importantly, our new partnerships are evidence of our platform’s wide appeal, strong value proposition, and ease of deployment. As I’ve mentioned before, we are focused on developing many similar relationships, and will continue to announce them as they formalize. That said, we remain focused on execution, and intend to develop each of these opportunities to maximize their potential.”