Family-owned delivered food wholesaler Turner Price has launched the UK’s first wholesale B2B foodservice marketplace to give caterers instant access to more than 10,000 new products, with the ability to scale rapidly to meet growing customer expectations.
With the marketplace, Turner Price hopes to stock 50,000 products by the end of the year and has already seen record website traffic.
Accustomed to the ease, convenience, and efficiency of the marketplace model in their personal lives, many food and beverage wholesale buyers are starting to question conventional B2B purchasing methods. Today, 80% of B2B buyers expect a similar experience offered on B2C websites, with roughly 50% of B2B buyers preferring to make work-related purchases on B2C sites.
Knowing that the traditional wholesale model has restricted customers in what they can order, first-mover Turner Price is launching a marketplace to respond to their customers’ evolving expectations and to deliver them near limitless choice.
The marketplace will bring together experienced sellers that offer customers food, catering equipment and accessories, tableware, kitchenware, clothing, specialist food and drink, and more.
Using the Mirakl Marketplace Platform has enabled Turner Price to seamlessly blend first-party and third-party products, ultimately providing a simple and elevated shopping experience for their customers with the convenience of a single point of payment and account management.
“The marketplace model was a no-brainer for us, as we lead the way in digital innovation in the sector and transform wholesaling to deliver the very best service to our customers,” says Julian Owen, Director of Sales Marketing at Turner Price. “Like many sectors, catering experiences fast-moving trends and customers want to tap into these, while also having a broader choice of products. Marketplace is changing the paradigm of traditional wholesale and our marketplace, powered by Mirakl’s leading technology and expertise, is unlocking greater revenue, better customer relationships and pushing our business ahead of the competition.”
For the Hull-based company, the marketplace is also expanding geographic horizons as it allows customers to order products sourced from all over the UK. Traditionally, Turner Price delivered to six counties, however through the marketplace the organisation now has the ability to go UK-wide.
Marc Teulières, EVP, Customer Success B2B at Mirakl, adds, “Turner Price is driving digital disruption in the food and beverage wholesale sector in the UK and the marketplace is already bringing strong results, including record website traffic. Working alongside Turner Price to set up the first food service marketplace is a strong signal that the UK B2B market is ready to embrace the marketplace model as a means to innovate, drive growth and digitally transform.”
