Germany's Foodservice Industry:
Where Restaurants Buy Their Products,
and What They Buy

By Roland Adler
Senior Project Director, Marketing

The concept of a “cash & carry” market for foodservice operators – a business-to-business wholesale warehouse for purchasing ingredients and other products used by restaurants and other foodservice outlets – is not unique to Germany, but this channel is more commonly used in Germany than in other European nations. Approximately 40% of all raw products and ingredient sales destined for the German foodservice market are purchased in this channel. The other 60% of sales come from distributors, specialists, or suppliers who ship directly to foodservice operators.

The Cash & Carry channel’s primary customers are small and independent restaurant operators in Germany – accounting for nearly 50% of sales in this channel. The other half of the channel’s sales are tied to non-foodservice industries, such as hairdressers, lawyers, and other retailers.

Among the foodservice customers, Full Service Independent restaurant operators account for 38% of Cash & Carry sales; this is the largest portion of Cash & Carry sales for food and beverage products. Quick Service restaurants are the second most important customer group in this channel. In third position is the Leisure segment, including bars, cinemas, pubs, and other leisure outlets and cafés. The Travel segment, Lodging (hotels, etc.), Canteen Operators, Education (on-campus foodservice/catering), the Care sector (hospitals, senior citizens’ homes), and the Institutional sector (prisons, military, etc.) play only a relatively small role in wholesale Cash & Carry sales.
 
Significant differences exist among foodservice segments, in terms of how widely they use the Cash & Carry channel. Full Service operators purchase more food than beverages in these markets in Germany (based on Euros spent), while the Quick Service spends more on beverages than food at these markets.

In general, beverages are the top-requested product group by foodservice operators in the Cash & Carry markets in Germany. Packaged food is next in importance, and far beyond that, we see fresh food, with a spend share of 14%.

Looking deeper into the product groups, we see a differentiation between the share of fresh and frozen foods purchased. Full Service operators seem to feed their need for fresh food products in the cash & carry channel, purchasing more fresh food than frozen food here, compared to their purchase habits at local or smaller direct distributors. Even so, 50% of all frozen food purchased at Cash & Carry wholesalers in Germany end up in Full Service restaurants. Quick Service restaurants also purchase more fresh food than frozen in this channel. In the Leisure segment, Cash & Carry is used equally for purchasing fresh and frozen foods.

About the data
NPD’s CRESTand SupplyTrac services allow companies to dig deeper into the data to identify the foodservice market’s leading companies, brands, products, and package sizes. CREST has long been relied upon to explain consumer behavior in the foodservice market, and to uncover opportunities for operators and manufacturers. Its data was useful in understanding the “front of the house.” Now, through SupplyTrac, foodservice marketers in Germany also have a view into the “back of the house” – what happens in restaurant kitchens.SupplyTrac provides information about food and beverage shipments between suppliers and operators, based on point-of-sale data from Cash & Carry markets and distributors.

For more information about NPD’s foodservice information and insights for Europe and the U.S., please contact Jochen Pinsker at +49-911-8918-210 or e-mail Jochen_Pinsker@npd.com.