Three percent of United Natural Foods, Inc.'s 2023 product spend will be with diverse-owned suppliers, announced the company. UNFI also shared that it doubled its year-over-year spending with diverse-owned suppliers in 2022.
UNFI’s goal is to build a better grocery supply chain, according to the company. Its supplier diversity team engages with diverse-owned suppliers to help them achieve equal access to purchasing and selling opportunities with corporate procurement, sales, merchandising, and retail teams.
“Utilizing a vast network of diverse-owned suppliers not only advances our efforts to help create a more equitable food system, but by actively engaging and introducing diverse-owned suppliers to a broad range of UNFI customers, our retailers are able to unveil new sales opportunities and offer a wider selection of products to meet their consumer’s needs,” said Guillaume Bagal, UNFI VP of diversity and inclusion, in a statement.
The company’s ACT (apply, commit, transform) initiative to engage with diverse suppliers resulted in over $700 million of diverse supplier purchases with over 600 suppliers during the company’s fiscal 2022 year. In addition, during a targeted three-month supplier outreach effort to existing suppliers, UNFI uncovered 167 new diverse-owned suppliers who were not previously identified as a diverse supplier.
The company has also worked with retailers to showcase diverse products. One such example is during pride month 2022 when the company worked with Stop & Shop to display LGBTQ+ suppliers in an endcap at 400 locations across the country.
“Our work to educate UNFI associates on diverse-owned suppliers combined with our efforts to consistently participate in matchmaking sessions between diverse-owned suppliers and retail customers has created wonderful success stories such as the one with Stop & Shop during Pride month,” said Lori Rodriques, UNFI supplier diversity manager, in a statement. “We’re getting stronger by continuously getting better and by purposely expanding our diverse supplier network we’re creating more opportunities for diverse-owned suppliers to grow their businesses and retail success stories by working with UNFI.”
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