Wholesale food suppliers do more than provide food to grocery stores and restaurants. While many think of these companies as only dealing with these food sources, they actually do much more.

Many of these companies process different types of food products for institutional purposes. School cafeterias often use them to provide boxed lunches each day for students. These will consist of sandwiches prepared with lunchmeat, a piece of fruit such as an apple and possibly some chips. There may also be small packets of mayonnaise or mustard for use on the sandwich. Some schools will also have breakfasts with cereal and fruit for students that come in early in the day. These meals may also have some sort of beverage with them.

School cafeterias that serve hot food often get their supplies from wholesale food distributors.They can obtain large cans of vegetables, meats, breads or other products in large sizes. The school kitchen staff will then set about making full meals for lunches out of the ingredients.

Prisons, jails and some hospitals also use these services. Many of them are located in cities or towns that do not have extra funds to maintain staff to provide food service. Others have looked into the cost of running their own kitchens and seen that it is more beneficial financially to obtain meals from vendors like these.

Another service that these companies can provide is during times of crisis. Every year, there are communities that are destroyed by hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding and earthquakes. Scientists predict that storms will intensify and that there is also danger from things like volcanic eruptions in the Northwest and Yellowstone areas. While the best type of emergency planning is for each person or family to create their own supply of food for emergencies, this is not likely to happen. For this reason many cities and towns have agreements in place to have wholesale food supplies delivered should a crisis occur in their area. These companies will generally have their own trucks to make deliveries thus assuring that they will get the food out in a timely manner.

These vendors usually have very large facilities that they use to prepare the food items in. They are USDA certified which means that all products are prepared using methods that ensure freshness and quality. Because wholesale food suppliers can prepare many tens of thousands of meals in one day, they operate in an assembly line fashion with each employee performing a specific function.