How to find food importers and distributors for your product

If you make food or drink and want to sell it in another country, the whole problem is one sentence long: you need the name of the person who buys, at a company that would plausibly want your product, with an address that reaches them. Everything below is a different way of getting to that sentence.

None of it is complicated. It is just slow, and knowing which parts are slow for a reason saves you the months most people spend finding out.

First, know what you are looking for

“Importer” and “distributor” get used as if they were the same job, and the difference decides who is worth writing to.

• An importer brings goods across the border and handles customs, duties and compliance. Some import and then sell on; some import for their own retail or foodservice business.
• A distributor sells into shops, restaurants and caterers. Many distributors do not import at all, and will ask you to land the goods in country first.
• A wholesaler sells on to smaller trade buyers, usually on a cash and carry or delivered basis.
• A retail or foodservice buyer works inside a chain and buys for its own shelves or kitchens. Slowest to reach, biggest when it lands.

Write these down before you look for anybody, because the same company can be all four and the email you send is different for each. The commonest wasted month in this trade is a producer emailing distributors asking them to do an importer’s job.

1. Buy a database

Several companies sell lists of food importers and distributors. Best Food Importers advertises access to more than thirty thousand importers across a hundred and ninety countries; Export Solutions advertises over ten thousand distributors in ninety six countries. Those are their own published claims rather than numbers anyone has checked for you, which is worth remembering when you compare two of them.

What it is good for. Coverage, immediately. You pay once and you have thousands of rows this afternoon, which beats three weeks of searching if what you need is breadth.

What it is not good for. A database is a photograph of a moment. People change jobs, companies get bought, addresses stop working, and a list sold to you is a list sold to everybody else in your category too. You also get a company, not a reason: the row does not tell you whether this importer wants your kind of product this year, so the qualifying work is still entirely yours, and that work is most of the job.

Check before you pay. When the data was last verified, whether you can filter by product category and country rather than just download everything, whether you get a named person or a general enquiries address, and whether there is a refund if a meaningful share of the addresses bounce.

2. Trade shows

Anuga, SIAL, Gulfood, Fancy Food, Biofach and the rest exist because this trade still does business face to face. A buyer who takes your sample at a stand has done something no email can make them do.

What it is good for. Quality, by a distance. A conversation and a taste beats any amount of correspondence, and the exhibitor list is itself one of the best free directories in the business, published months in advance.

What it is not good for. Cost, and what happens afterwards. A stand, travel, samples and staff is a serious sum for a small producer, and most of the cards collected are never followed up properly. If you go, the follow up is the investment, not the stand.

The free version. Read the exhibitor and visitor lists without going. They are usually public, they are current, and they tell you which companies are spending money to be in your category this year.

3. Your government’s trade body

Nearly every exporting country funds somebody to help its producers sell abroad, and most people never use them. They run market studies, subsidise pavilion space at shows, and will often introduce you to importers directly. In many countries it is free or close to it.

What it is good for. An introduction from a trade body carries more weight than an email from a stranger, and the market research is work you would otherwise pay for.

What it is not good for. Speed and fit. You move at the pace of a programme, and the introductions are to the companies they already know rather than the ones best matched to your product.

4. Look them up yourself

The unglamorous one, and the one that most reliably works. Importers and distributors publish who they are, because being found is how they get their supply. Their websites list the brands they carry, the categories they cover and often the buying contact.

Where to look, in the order that pays off fastest:

• The back of a competitor’s label. A product like yours already on a shelf in that country was imported by somebody, and the importer’s name and address is on the label by law in most markets. This is the single most underused source in the trade.
• Retailer supplier pages. Chains publish how to become a supplier, and often which distributors they buy through.
• Trade association members. Importer and distributor associations publish member lists, current and free.
• Customs and shipping records. In some countries, notably the United States, import records are public and show who actually received shipments of your product category. Real behaviour rather than a claim.

What it is good for. It costs nothing but time, the information is current because you are reading it today, and you learn your market properly while you do it.

What it is not good for. Time. Doing this seriously for one country is a few hours a week for months, and it is the first thing dropped when an order needs shipping.

5. Have it researched for you, continuously

The newest option, and the one this site sells, so read it accordingly. Instead of buying a list once, you describe the buyer you want and the looking happens every week against the live web, which means what you get was true this week rather than whenever the database was last refreshed.

What to ask of anything in this category, including us. Does it check the address works before handing it over, or does it hand you bounces? Does it tell you why it picked each company? Does the email go from your own address, and do you see it before it sends? And does it stop the moment somebody replies or bounces?

How to tell a real buyer from a directory entry

Whichever route you take, you end up with a pile of company names and the same job: deciding which are worth an email. Four questions do most of the work.

• Do they already carry something like yours? Not identical, adjacent. A distributor with three olive oils does not need a fourth; one with a strong Mediterranean range and no olive oil has a hole.
• Are they the right size for you? A national distributor will ask for volumes and terms a small producer cannot survive. Aim at somebody who would be pleased to have you rather than somebody who would swallow you.
• Is there a person, or just a front desk? An address that begins info@ reaches a shared mailbox. It is worth writing to, but a named buyer is worth many times more.
• Is there anything happening now? A new warehouse, a category they have just added, a show they are exhibiting at next month. A reason to write this week is the difference between a reply and silence.

What to do this week

If you have never done this before, do the free things first and in this order. Pick one country, not three. Read the labels of five products like yours already selling there and write down the importers. Find that country’s importer association and read its member list. Ask your own trade body what they run for your sector. That is an afternoon, it costs nothing, and it will tell you more about whether your product has a place in that market than any list you could buy.

Then decide whether the slow part is worth your time or somebody else’s. That is the only real question here, and it is a question about your week rather than about your product.

Next: More guides for food exporters