Market Profile: Food Depot Content To ‘Expand By Opportunities’

The year 2021 will mark EVP of Food Depot Jamey Leseueur’s 40th year with the company. He started in high school, worked through college and never left. “I’ve loved every minute of it,” he said.

Asked what’s kept him there, he said he enjoys the dynamics. “This industry, if nothing else, is always challenging. And this year, it’s proven to be that in spades,” Leseueur said.

“The pandemic is just one of those challenges that you never really thought much about. The supply chain itself has always been very stable, and we’ve never had this issue before, until this year. It became a real issue in March…I buy from UNFI…and they could only pick and pull 27,000 cases a day to pick and deliver. And that was to all their customers.

“Well, when we first started this, we were ordering two-and-a-half to three times as many cases as they could pull. I never thought I would have to be canceling departments and deciding which departments I needed the least on one particular day.

“It was just very interesting watching the trickle-down effects of the supply chain, all the way down to the retail end.”

And these effects taught the Food Depot executive new things about the business.

“We learned where to purchase things. We were fortunate in the respect that when the meat supply was running slim, we were able to find alternative sources,” he explained. “Unfortunately for the restaurant industry when they closed down, you had foodservice suppliers that had many a product but didn’t have any customers.