Buying a food distribution business in Panhandle and North Florida

• Exclusive or long-standing supplier agreements, in writing, with brands customers ask for by name.
• Many customers, careful credit checks and little bad debt.
• Tight, well-planned delivery routes, so each truck makes many stops a day.
• A well-run cold chain (keeping food cold door to door): temperature monitoring and logs, reliable refrigeration, and backup power for hurricanes.
• A clean inspection history with the state and the FDA, and no recalls.
• Low spoilage and shrink (product lost to damage, theft or errors), tracked by product, with slow sellers dropped.
• Buyers and salespeople who know the customers and suppliers.
• Some customers on standing orders that go out weekly without a sales call.

• Supplier agreements: exclusivity, territory, termination and consent to a sale. Many can be ended on short notice, so talk to the main suppliers before you commit.
• How much rides on the biggest customers, and how many are restaurants that could close or switch suppliers.
• Overdue customer bills and past bad debts. Small restaurants and stores can be slow to pay.
• Inspection reports, recalls, customer complaints, and temperature logs for the coolers and trucks.
• Age and condition of coolers, freezers, trucks and their refrigeration units, and what breaks most often.
• An inventory count, with expired or nearly expired stock written off before the price is set.
• Fuel, insurance and driver costs, and driver turnover.
• For importers, customs records, tariffs and how long goods take to arrive.
• For produce, whether growers and shippers have been paid. Under PACA, unpaid sellers hold trust rights over a dealer's produce, inventory and receivables (money customers owe).

• Which brands are exclusive to you, and can those agreements be transferred?
• How much of your business comes from your top ten customers?
• What happens if a cooler fails, or the power goes out after a hurricane?
• What did your last state and FDA inspections find?
• How much product do you throw away each month?
• How do you decide which customers get credit?
• Do any of your suppliers sell directly to your customers?

This is our largest region by area. It runs from Pensacola east through Milton, Fort Walton Beach, Destin, Panama City and Tallahassee, and down into North Central Florida around Gainesville, Lake City and Live Oak, with many rural counties along the way. We also include Hardee County, around Wauchula.

The economy has several anchors. The military is a big one, with Naval Air Station Pensacola, Eglin Air Force Base, Hurlburt Field and Tyndall Air Force Base. Tallahassee is the state capital and home to Florida State University and Florida A&M University, and Gainesville has the University of Florida. The beaches from Pensacola to Panama City Beach, including Walton County's coast, draw summer visitors. Inland, timber, farming and small manufacturing matter, and towns like Apalachicola and Cedar Key make their living on the water. Contractors, defense and government service firms, restaurants, lodging and farm businesses all have markets here.

Plan for distance first. Pensacola is closer to New Orleans than to Gainesville, so most companies serve one local area, and you should know exactly where the customers are. Most of the Panhandle west of the Apalachicola River runs on Central time, an hour behind Tallahassee.

The beach season peaks in summer, the opposite of South Florida, while Gainesville and Tallahassee slow down when students leave. Hurricanes have hit hard: Michael came ashore near Mexico Beach as a Category 5 in 2018, and Idalia in 2023 and Helene in 2024 struck the Big Bend coast. Military base budgets and state government spending matter to many companies. Near the Alabama and Georgia lines, ask how much revenue comes from across the border, where other states' licenses may apply. Rural counties have small labor pools, so a company's key employees matter even more here.