A growing order book can leave a food business with an uncomfortable question: why does more sales activity seem to create more difficulty in the warehouse? Before cutting products or spending money on equipment, I would want to understand what that difficulty means. We may be taking on business that costs too much to fulfil. We may also have worthwhile business that we need to get better at delivering. Those situations call for different decisions.
First, establish which problem you have
It is easy to look at a large sales number and assume the operation should find a way to support it. The product margin might look attractive, too. But we still need to understand the work behind that sale: how much handling it requires, how long the goods stay with us and what it costs to move them through the facility.
If those demands consume the value of the sale, we have a financial problem to address. Selling more of the same goods will not, by itself, tell us how to resolve it.
There is another possibility. The business makes sense financially, but getting the orders out is difficult. We need to give that execution problem its own attention. Difficulty alone does not establish that a customer or product is unprofitable. Both problems can exist in the same operation, so I would keep asking about the economics and the practical work involved.
Sysco’s full-year fiscal 2026 results illustrate why the financial measures deserve separate attention. Compared with the previous fiscal year, sales rose 3.9%, GAAP operating expenses rose 5.6% and GAAP operating income rose 0.2%. The company’s explanation for higher expenses included investment in sales staff and capacity, incentive compensation and acquisition-related costs. That context matters: the difference between sales growth and profit growth includes spending with different purposes. It cannot establish a fulfilment failure on its own.
For the operation in front of us, the question is whether sales commitments make sense once we understand what delivering them involves.
Follow the product through the operation
I would start with turnover. Which products move through quickly, and which stay? Then I would put that alongside their margins and the work they require. A fast-moving item and a slower one can make very different demands on the same facility.
Follow the goods from arrival to departure. How long does unloading take? How much work goes into putting them away? How long do they remain on the floor or in storage before the team has to load them again? These are practical questions about where people’s time and the facility’s space are going.
With food, I would also look at spoilage and quality-control problems. Are we losing product while it is with us? Are particular goods repeatedly creating quality issues? Those belong in the discussion about the overall return from that business, alongside labour and handling time.
Sales and operations need to work through this together. Sales can explain what is being sold and what customers expect. Operations needs to bring in what actually happens to those goods. Looking at both helps us understand why an attractive sales figure may leave us with a much less attractive operating result—or with a valuable order that is simply hard to move.
Research into service costs supports looking beyond the product margin. In a 2008 study of a Brazilian food company, Reinaldo Guerreiro, Sérgio Rodrigues Bio and Elvira Vazquez Villamor Merschmann described “a more comprehensive customer profitability analysis than the classical paradigm.” Their case examined the additional insight available from measuring the cost of serving customers.
You will not always be able to examine everything completely. Even so, understanding turnover, handling, storage and losses gives you a better basis for deciding where to focus.
Put slow-moving products in context
A product can have a good margin and still sit in storage for a long time. I would question whether we need to keep it and whether the space and work it requires make sense. The margin is part of that decision, but so is the way the product moves.
Then I would bring the customer relationship into the conversation. Some customers need a particular dry, frozen or fresh item as part of what they buy from us. Keeping that item may matter to keeping their business, even if the item itself turns slowly.
That is why I would look at what we currently stock alongside what we need to stock for those customers. If we only discuss the slow turnover, we leave out the reason the product may be there. If we only discuss its attractive margin, we leave out the storage and handling demands.
Sales and operations need to understand both. The question is whether this product earns its place in the operation once we consider how it moves and what it means to the customer relationship. That leaves room for a slower mover worth retaining, as well as one whose place in the assortment needs reconsidering.
Match the response to the problem
Once we understand the work and its value, we can make a more useful decision about what changes. If part of the operation is consuming resources without producing a worthwhile return, scaling that activity back may make sense. That should follow the investigation into the business we are serving.
Where the business is valuable but difficult to fulfil, I would go back to how long the goods stay and how much handling they need. If those goods account for an important share of revenue, could automation help with the work involved? It is an option to examine against the actual handling problem and the value of that business.
There are practical examples of distributors addressing these costs. In October 2025 reporting on Sysco, Reuters identified improvements involving “transportation, warehouse maintenance and inventory levels” that helped counter rising product costs. Our own choices need to follow the costs and difficulties we find in our operation.
I would want the next conversation between sales and operations to be specific: which business is worth serving, what does serving it involve, and what needs to change so we can deliver it sensibly? Growing sales becomes more useful when the team understands both the value of those orders and the work required to get them out the door.
