Grocery bills are going up for a lot of reasons. One has to do with how food gets on grocery store shelves. WSJ’s Jesse Newman explains a hidden layer of fees that are getting passed down to the consumer. Further Reading: - The Mysterious Fees Inflating Your Grocery Bill - After Years of Raising Prices, Food Companies Hit Consumers’ Limits Further Listening: - The Twinkie: From Bankruptcy to Billions - Food Fight: PepsiCo vs. Carrefour Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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More than a decade ago, Kyle Kaler was working in finance in New York City and trying to live healthier.
I took a lot of things out of my diet, you know, grains, wheat, corn, soy, like all of these things. I took a lot of processed foods out of my diet and couldn't find a whole lot on store shelves that tasted really good as well.
So Kyle tried to solve this problem in his own kitchen.
And so, yeah, threw all these dried fruits and nuts and seeds in like a food processor and like blended it together and just ate it like that for a snack.
This snack became life-changing for Kyle. He moved to San Antonio, Texas and started a food company. He named it Wild Way Foods and began selling his granola at farmer's markets. And after sales went well, Kyle thought about going bigger. So he headed to the biggest health food store he could think of.
I just walked into Whole Foods Markets headquarters in Austin with this product in a bag and was like, hey, I have a product that I think would sell well on your shelves. And, you know, there was a woman at like the front desk that was like, well, do you have an appointment or like anything? And I was like, no, I just I think this would sell well in your stores.
And she looked at me like I was a little crazy and was like, OK, we'll give it to me and I'll give it to the buyer. A few days later, got an email from the cereal buyer and said, hey, I got your product and I think this is great. Let's talk about if you guys want to be on shelves.
Kyle's granola was going to be on Whole Foods shelves. But to make that happen, Kyle had to start working with a distributor. Distributors are companies that buy, store, and transport millions of products to grocery stores.
At that point, now the work begins for us to set up the relationship with the distributor. So we sell to the distributor. The distributor then sells to the retailer.
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