Did you know that the upcoming Flavors of Carolina, which will be in Greensboro in February, will feature a delegation of Mexico buyers? The group is being recruited by SUSTA and NC Department of Agriculture, with matchmaking meetings available for NC companies for 35 USD. Interested exporters can register here.
Most of the food and beverage companies we work with for growing their sales in Mexico consider Mexico’s tourism and hospitality B2B customers first as their potential clients, prior to attempting a retail distribution route. We see this either due to distinctive flavors preferences that will appeal more broadly to international tourists on their visit to Mexico, or due to price-points that likewise fit better in tourist regions, where consumers tend to splash out more.
For this reason we have been looking more closely at the distribution landscape for food service in Mexico. Who sells to the restaurants here, and how can NC companies work with them?
In Mexico, like the US, there is a spectrum, and different players in the spectrum can play more than one role. A manufacturer can also be a broadline distributor, a wholesaler can provide delivery, and an operator’s captive supply chain can start selling to third parties. Likewise, there can also be intermediary brokers to help make sure niche outlets have access to high-valuer products, even in harder-to-reach places like the Yucatan and Baja peninsulas.
| Model | Characteristics | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Cash-and-carry / mayoreo abarrotero | Physical branches; wholesale pricing; serves small businesses, informal trade and consumers; customer often handles transport | Central de Abasto, Zorro Abarrotero, Scorpion (in addition to Sam’s and Costco) |
| Foodservice wholesalers / delivered wholesale | Multi-brand assortment sold specifically to restaurants, hotels, caterers and institutions; delivery is central to the model | Imperial, Chef Mart (Sabormex), La Ranita de la Paz |
| Broadline / value-added foodservice distributors | Warehousing + cold chain + multi-temperature distribution + sourcing/representation + account management; closer to the Sysco model | HM Group, Pacific Star (Arancia), American Foodservice |
| Manufacturer-backed broadline distributors | Started from, or remain tied to, food manufacturing portfolios but distribute substantial third-party assortments and provide foodservice services | Sigma Foodservice, CIEMSA Foodservice, Qualtia Food Solutions |
| Manufacturer foodservice divisions | Primarily take their own brands/products to professional kitchens, often adding culinary/technical support and specialized formats | Nestle Professional Mexico, Herdez Food Service, Unilever Food Solutions |
| Operator-linked supply companies | Supply-chain operations originating inside restaurant groups; may manufacture, centralize purchasing and distribution, and sometimes sell externally | Nova Foods (CMR), Alsea’s production/supply operations, Nikmart (Wings Army) |
The Mexican Nuance: Example Distributors and How they Cover the Market
Mexico’s distribution landscape, for reasons ranging from the complex logistics to the extra-large local palate to the availability of financing to small businesses, is by no means readily understood by comparison to that of the US. For starters, neither US Foods de Mexico (who are mainly present around Mazatlan and Los Cabos), nor Sysco’s former partner in Mexico Pacific Star, nor the Argentinian company American Food Service— who in Mexico has a larger footprint than Pacific Star– were at the Abastur show with booths. To understand the distribution landscape, we can think of two different axes: one, based on who the customer is; and two, based on the specialization of value-added services.
The cash-and-carry operation Scorpion describes its business explicitly as mayoreo, serving mayoristas (wholesale customers), medio mayoristas (wholesale distributors), detallistas (retailers) and consumidor final (consumers), from one piece up to a truckload, through more than 70 branches. Despite the fact that many, especially independent, restaurant and catering operations may shop with them, their gamut of customers attended puts it closer to Mexico’s traditional grocery and markets chains than to a dedicated restaurant distributor. By comparison, La Ranita de la Paz explicitly describes itself as a distributor of dry foodservice products for the HORECA industries, supplying hotels, restaurants, industrial cafeterias and hospitals and delivering to the customer’s warehouse.
Who is the customer?
Consumer ← small retailer/informal food business ← independent restaurant ← restaurant chain/hotel ← institutional/national account
How sophisticated is the supply-chain service?
Store pickup ← delivered wholesale ← scheduled route distribution ← multi-temperature distribution ← national account/logistics management
- Sigma Foodservice is the largest player in foodservice distribution and another instructive example. A sister company to the meats and dairy producer Sigma Foods, who have 8 plants in the USA, its online foodservice catalog contains dry, refrigerated and frozen products from Sigma brands and numerous outside manufacturers, including Unilever, Herdez, Nestle, McCain, Heinz, Hormel and Simplot. The foodservice company also offers culinary consulting, product development, custom formulations and packaging, online ordering, call-center support and nationwide refrigerated/frozen distribution. Restaurant groups in the Yucatan peninsula, one of the most important restaurant clusters in the country serving Cancun and the Mayan Riviera, tell us that Sigma Foodservice is the only distributor that readily services the peninsula due to logistical challenges.
- Competing distributor/manufacturer Qualtia goes further still. Qualtia’s Food Solutions business supplies HORECA with prepared foods manufacturing, in addition to its more than 4,500 distributed product SKUs and logistics/operating locations across 16 states.These manufacturer-backed distributors increasingly compete directly with independent broadliners in specialty services for food service operators, but in many ways outshine the broadline companies in their presence.
- The company NOVA Foods is the back-of-house operations for Corporación Mexicana de Restaurantes. Nova supplies CMR’s restaurant ecosystem includes Olive Garden and Chili’s in Mexico, 229 restaurants and 89 franchises internally. However, it also supplies operators external to CMR, about 500 HORECA customers and 900 retail stores.
We recently attended the largest national trade show for Mexico’s hospitality industries, Abastur, which took place at the end of August in Mexico City. The show’s name is a portmanteau of Abasto and Turismo: Supply for Tourism. It features exhibitors catering to food service and hotels primarily. The 2026 edition featured 600 exhibitors and approximately 20,000 professional buyers.
Compared to the other notable HORECA shows Exphotel (of which there is both a Cancun and a Puerto Vallarta edition every year), Abastur is larger but because it is in Mexico City as opposed to the beach destinations, it is more strongly focused on food service. Notable distributors at Abastur included Sigma Food Service, CIEMSA Foodservice, HM Food Service, and Qualtia.