Mastering Foodservice Growth: Strategies for Success in a Competitive Market

Guest: Ayman Arnous, General Manager for Food Services at Almarai Pro.

Opening
In 2019, for the first time, food service sales in North America exceeded retail sales. The biggest question is when food service sales will exceed retail sales in our part of the world — that day will eventually come, and we’re experiencing some of the best opportunities during this time.

How we met
Ayman and I first met in Bidfood back in 2009, when I was a key account executive. I remember the first question I asked him: “I have this client who always asks me for a discount and I really don’t want to lose him — what can I do?” That’s where we started the discussion of added-value selling and really understanding the customer.

What drives success in food service
Food service, contrary to retail, is not about branding or visibility — it’s about the ability to really connect with people, understand the business, and wire for the future. It’s about commitment to short-term objectives while building focus to win long term. It’s also about technology, investment, speed to market, and the hard work to understand business needs.

Connecting with clients
Whether you already know the business or are meeting a new prospect, you have to be the right ambassador for yourself and your company. People in this business like to meet smart, high-potential individuals who can help them and uncover potential that hasn’t been discussed. Build likability first, then comes commercial acumen — understanding the prospect’s business, plans, and goals, so you can propose the right commercial portfolio.

What operators want
Most outlets start because they want to bring something unique to market, differentiate, and fulfill a need. In Saudi Arabia, research post-pandemic shows one in every two Saudis is choosing to eat healthier meals — a huge shift from five or ten years ago. Operators want to help clients achieve health-consciousness while achieving their own profitable goals.

Global health trend
This isn’t just regional, it’s global. The variety of choices today helps consumers prioritize what they want to see on a menu, creating opportunity for operators to invest in that segment, which is growing organically, with menus changing more frequently and more advanced healthy products being proposed by suppliers.

Vegetarian and delivery trends
The protein segment is still high, but there’s fast growth in vegetarian options and healthier seafood — a shift in consumer choices, wiser decisions especially around operator selection, driven by visibility through aggregator apps that make menus accessible at the click of a button.

Selling a concept, not just a product
Today, food service selling is about selling ingredients versus a concept versus a menu — looking at trends, implications, and opportunities. If you don’t have anything healthy on your menu, you risk being left behind. The opportunity is helping operators evolve their menu, and growing together.

Historical challenges managing food service
Managing food service in this region started roughly 20 years ago, often by bringing good people from retail, and using food service as a dumping ground for products that couldn’t sell elsewhere — creating an environment of incompetent employees and eroding pricing power, turning suppliers into mere order-takers instead of order-makers.

Winning by design
You win by design in food service — embedding the right structure, hiring competent people with the behavioral element of prospecting and hunting, then training as the second weapon in your arsenal. This requires patience, time, and effort from both the organization and its leaders.

Finding talent in a scarce market
There’s a war on talent, and scarcity in the market for B2B professionals. The second key element is training — investing time and knowledge to connect with professionals in the marketplace and design the right materials, touching on behavioral elements: how to win in the marketplace, what’s the purpose that drives improvement.

Patience as leaders
Leaders who want fast results will suffer — you have to believe in the journey and have a solid long-term vision, investing enough time for your team to be on different frequencies with the right materials and training.

Investing in yourself
During the pandemic, Ayman joined a program with 20 other sales leaders called “From Sales Confusion to Sales Certainty” without thinking twice. The speed of the team is determined by the speed of its leader — growth in food service will by far exceed growth in retail.

Growth numbers
Comparing operator counts to five years ago, we’re talking about a 38% increase in total count; in the UAE, a 25% increase. The pandemic slowed growth temporarily, but the channel bounced back quickly with high traffic in restaurants, growing faster than retail.

Supply chain and pricing challenges
Food service has always been a price-sensitive, dynamic segment. Costs to run operations are increasing drastically, affecting pricing, which is now changing on a quarterly basis rather than the static pricing of a few years ago. Continuous consultation with operators, managing costs together, and securing the supply chain are key focuses.

Communicating price increases with integrity
Winning happens in the preparation phase, not the execution phase — if a salesperson shows up afraid to communicate bad news, the customer feels that fear and reacts negatively. Leaders must instill confidence and explain price increases with full integrity: the real reasons, what happens to the bottom line, salaries, and the business if prices don’t increase.

The long view on relationships
During the pandemic, despite volumes dropping 40-50%, prices were kept the same to support operators. Now that business is flourishing again, it’s the right time to nudge prices up — this kind of relationship allows you to win in the short term and invest in the long term, and customers remember it.

Closing thought
Leveraging people skills, understanding the laws of influence and reciprocity, and finding a win for everyone is essential — we want to help clients achieve their goals, but we can’t do that if we don’t achieve ours too. We’re in this together.

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