Asian food distributors in the US

This, what is your state? here in SO CA, we use: Wismettac (formerly Nishimoto), JFC (japan food company) and Mutual trading, which has an extensive catalog of products design for japanese restaurants. This are all wholesalers, but their drink and snacks are limited. On the other hand they cover all for japanese restaurant food supplies except fresh.

Go to the best sushi restaurants in the area and ask them who their vendors are. Avoid national chains (Sysco, RD, etc.). They don't specialize in fish. I own a sushi restaurant and we have one primary fish vendor but for a few things we have a couple of smaller vendors that fill in gaps or that our sushi chef feels has better quality or prices.

it will be a tough battle for you since you have no restaurant experience, and from the sound of it, you haven't even work in one either, but if you are determined and have the cash to burn, go give it a couple years try. and suggestion to find purveyor, you can always try and go to local asian / korean markets and build a good relationship with the owners and then ask them where they get their meats / whole cuts / whole animal. also, please start learning korean

Generally you call your rep and order over the phone, call the order desk and prey they send the right stuff, or anything at all. order it online from there order system or maybe you can text what you need. If you can order things with a product code instead of a description of what is needed you have a better chance of getting what you actually want instead of what they think you want or what they figure will be best.

Yes. I can order throughout the day on my phone. I haven't placed an order in person for over 10 years. This doesn't mean I don't have communication for let's say, I want a certain oyster and I need to set that up w/ the rep for delivery. As a Chef, you need to almost train your reps to understand how you order, and they need to adjust. It's the 1 time where we get to be the customer. I do everything to make my customers happy, the reps better do the same

Online ordering is great. Contact your rep and they can probably help you with everything. If you don't know the rep you probably should grab an old invoice before you call the company. That will have the account number and probably even a phone number too.

I am begging you to order ahead and not live off the truck. And yes, minimums are a real thing and forcing your rep to run you a will-call order is bonkers. Get a Costco or Restaurant Depot card and fix your own emergencies.

If you have one, go by your local Asian market. Ask to buy a case. BONUS is that buying by the case usually comes with a discount.

Check to see if there's a Costco Business Center in your area. The prices are quite often significantly lower than exclusive Restaurant supply stores. Source: I owned a restaurant until it went under during the pandemic.

It helps if you think of your vendors as a trucking company that just happens to own a lot of refrigerated warehouse space. It's also nice to sit down with your sales rep and gut prices on key items compared to other vendors or restaurant depot etc. Why is my pasta 5.50 a pound? If I pay more than two, I'll buy it from X.

We have multiple vendors we use, but the main vendor we get the bulk of product from, drives to my kitchen everyday & takes the order in person. All the rest are online or over phone. I've never seen a vendor that comes in person everyday until I started working at my current job, I thought it was pretty cool.

I have accounts with Sysco and Labatt. I don't have a huge menu, but one has one item that I can only get from them, and the other another item I can only get from them. My delivery day is Wednesday. I have a spreadsheet that I fill out on Monday with the sysco and Labatt prices and head to restaurant Depot on Tuesday. If restaurant depot is out of something I need, usually 75% of the time, I'll buy the cheaper stuff and rest depot and get the item/s I couldn't from the distributors. It takes some time, but I usually save a few hundred bucks each week, usually on bacon, oranges, and chives. There is sometimes a $40 difference per case on the same exact item between vendors. Even with both salespeople knowing I do this. They won't budge on prices.

I have Sysco, US Food, Pfg, and Restaurant Depot. My brother created a cherry picking app on excel. My chef puts the order into the app, and the app tells us who we should buy it from. My food costs dropped dramatically when we started using it!

> We have connections in south east Asia to get cheap wholesale supplies Shipping from Asia is terrible right now and will only improve slowly. It's so difficult that Costco had to charter their own container ships. If you're going to sell packaged groceries like spices, dried foods, canned stuff, you can buy that in the US from a couple of huge Asian food distributors. If you're also going to cover actual produce, that would need to be acquired locally. Grocery stores have a very slim margin and if you're not perfect at knowing what to buy and how much, the expired and damaged stock will kill you. Bubble tea is a completely different beast. You make it as needed and the inventory is comparatively tiny and the markup is comparatively huge. If the bubble tea shops are doing great, I'd suggest that instead. McDonalds isn't afraid to open near Burger King because it's a proven, non-saturated market. I'm pretty sure that if an area can support two bubble tea places it can probably handle three.

While I've not done ramen, I have done a fair bit of catering and worked with others in the restaurant industry. Here are some common questions I've found helpful: Do you have the capacity to make enough noodles? How much (time, money, labor, equipment, and space) will it cost you to make them yourself? If you need to invest in equipment, what will you need to do to break even? How does that compare to buying them? What is your competition doing? Will your customers care? You don't need to tell *me* the answer to these questions, but your answers will tell you a lot. You may need to get in contact with commercial food distributors directly for actual prices.

Have worked with some small Asian groceries and similar stores exactly like you’re proposing. Admittedly there are numerous in my area and they primarily cater to a specific market of Asian immigrants. This is not a high margin business usually. On a strictly hours to dollars perspective, it’s very likely you’d do better as an assistant manager at McDonald’s. You may be in the golden area where an Asian grocery has not arrived yet but there is high demand. But at that size and scale I don’t see how you would be able to buy at prices that would make that a very lucrative business. Also, regarding the bubble tea - particularly in high overhead businesses like food/restaurants, what appears to be thriving doesn’t necessarily indicate financial success. It’s another scenario where where when all factors are included from a time/money perspective it’s entirely possible you would be better off working a regular job. Unless you really love bubble tea. All of this is with very little context. There are definitely people who are successful at various ventures but you’re looking at one with a potentially long, slow curve that may not ever curve the way you want it to.

So should people not living in China deal with people via Alibaba or get into contact with a sourcing agent such as yourself? Do you or your company guarantee that all the products coming out of the factories will arrive in the US working and in good order? Do you accept returns or refunds for bad goods? How much do you or your company takes as a cut? You're basically a drop-shipper FOR the factory, and I'd be buying something from you in bulk to re-sell in the US, in the hopes that instead of being screwed by a chinese agent due to maliciousness or a simple mis-translation, I'd be dealing with someone who speaks English and could "hopefully" give consistent quality product with better shipping times....but I'd be paying a premium for it, so hopefully there would be margins left. Right?

What you’re missing is everything else besides making a spreadsheet with the price sheet your sales rep gave you and summing it up and multiplying by some magic number you made up. Your business is now 5 slices of a pie. Your first slice is food costs, it’s 1/4 of the pie. Your second slice is labor, it’s 1/3 of your pie. Your third slice is rent and it’s another 1/5 of the pie. Your fourth slice is everything else from the power bill to the water bill to the slew of insurance and licensing and professional services. That’s another 1/5 of your pie. Your slice is your slice. It’s your profits. It’s more a sliver if you’re lucky and good at management. If your rent is already $6k then you should be making $25k a month To sustain $25k your staffing coverage is going to be expensive. It’s going to be $20/hr min wage in California soon enough. I dont worry about how much money it costs to make my cup of boba tea. I worry how to continuously hire, train, run workers and market and advertise and draw customers in. Get more help before you jump into this.

I open 2 boba trucks and bought out 2 boba tea shops this year. I agree with many of the comments, the profit margin per drink isn't the problem, the overhead is crazy. Its really a volume game, if you have a consistently high volume, then you should be fine.

I know how to make ramen noodles, that's why I'm asking this question for those who have started a ramen shop business. Because for a small ramen shop, I think it is not business-wise or practical to make your own noodles. I mean, I'm just thinking that now because I know how hard and time-consuming it is to make good ramen noodles, especially if you need to make them every day for your small ramen shop. Not to mention, the cost is higher than buying in bulk from suppliers. That's why I want to ask owners of ramen shops their opinion on this. But yeah, you are right. I am passionate about making ramen, so part of me is thinking that even if it will cost me more, I should make my own noodles because by doing that, I will have complete control over the bowl of ramen that I sell. However, I still want to ask this question because at the end of the day, I want to make sure my business is worth doing. I mean, business wise.