PROVIDENCE, RI - Part of the draw of forming partnerships with big-name players is the ability to leverage their supply chain services. United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) has been a key partner for many brands looking to expand, and recently launched its new Community Marketplace. Through the business-to-business e-commerce solution, UNFI will modernize the way brands interact with grocery wholesalers by allowing thousands of emerging products not currently available at UNFI distribution centers to be ordered on its website.

“Access to the largest assortment of available items is an area of increasing importance to our customers, and Community Marketplace delivers on this need while giving brands an easy-to-use platform to gain the speed, scale, and agility to win in today’s marketplace,” said Tom Kraus, Vice President of E-commerce. “By fully integrating Community Marketplace with our Easy Options website, we now have an industry leading tool for our customers to better connect with suppliers to provide their local communities with the widest variety of on-trend and emerging natural and conventional products.”

Through this virtual marketplace, suppliers gain immediate access to UNFI’s digital infrastructure to promote and sell their products to UNFI’s broad customer base. A press release explained that approved suppliers keep complete control of their inventory, order management, pricing, and shipping charges. In turn, UNFI customers gain access to an even broader assortment of unique and local items with flexible order sizes and the convenience of ordering from multiple sources online in one place. Businesses looking to become an approved Community Marketplace supplier can apply here.

UNFI Easy Options is available to a variety of businesses, including independent grocery retailers, convenience stores, natural food stores, and restaurants. Through the website, customers of all sizes have access to over 20,000 grocery items that are fulfilled from UNFI’s distribution network without minimum order sizes, order frequency requirements, or membership fees. Currently, hundreds of Community Marketplace SKUs are available through the Easy Options site, but with strong interest from the supplier community, the variety of products will continue to grow as more vendors participate.

There are endless opportunities to form influential partnerships in this industry, and ANUK is here to help you uncover them.

United Natural Foods, Inc.