Company: CHEF
Filing Date: 2025-02-25
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001517175-25-000002
Chunk: 12

Company: Chefs' Warehouse, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-25
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 12
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 our business are the result of an increase in the breadth and depth of our product portfolio, our commitment to customer service, the efforts of our experienced and sophisticated sales professionals, the increased use of technology in the operations and management of our business and our ongoing consolidation of the fragmented specialty foodservice distribution industry. Since December 25, 2020, we have completed sixteen acquisitions which have increased our penetration in existing markets, expanded our footprint into new markets and/or enhanced our product capabilities. The up-front cash purchase prices for these sixteen acquisitions was more than $326.2 million, which we funded with cash generated from our operations and borrowings under our then existing credit facilities.

Excluding our direct-to-consumer businesses, we currently serve more than 50,000 core customer locations in our twenty-three primary geographic markets across the United States, the Middle East, and Canada. We maintain collaborative relationships with thousands of chefs while also acting as a critical marketing arm and route-to-market for many of our suppliers by leveraging an experienced and sophisticated sales force of approximately 980 sales and customer service professionals. We operate 49 distribution centers and provide service six days a week in many of our service areas, utilizing our fleet of delivery trucks to fill our customers’ orders.

Competitive Strengths  

We believe that, during our nearly 40-year history, we have achieved, developed and/or refined the following strengths which provide us with a distinct competitive position in the foodservice distribution industry and also the opportunity to achieve superior margins relative to most large broadline foodservice distributors:

Leading Distributor of Specialty Food Products in Many of the Key Culinary Markets. Based on our management’s industry knowledge and experience, we believe we are among the largest distributors of specialty food products, as measured by net sales, in the New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles metropolitan markets. We believe these markets, along with a number of other markets we serve, including Las Vegas, Miami, New England, Portland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Chicago, Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, Seattle, Sacramento, Texas, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar create and set the culinary trends for the rest of the United States, the Middle East, and Canada and provide us with valuable insight into the latest culinary and menu practices. Furthermore, we believe our established relationships with many of the top chefs, culinary schools and dining establishments in these key culinary markets have benefited us when we entered into new markets where we believe that chefs at our potential customers were generally knowledgeable of our brand and commitment to quality and excellence