After a successful pilot, the Specialty Food Association is enabling all of its product qualified maker members to sell their specialty food products via its Infinite Aisle, a transactional product marketplace. Items are sold on the platform through distributors to their retail customers who use Infinite Aisle to discover, source, and buy these products.
“Infinite Aisle is another example of our pivot to digital and how we listen and respond to member needs by developing valuable opportunities to grow their businesses,” said SFA President Bill Lynch.
When a retail buyer purchases maker products through a distributor on Infinite Aisle, the products are shipped directly from the maker to the retailer at no cost to the maker. Because distributors don’t have to warehouse these items, there’s no limit to how many Infinite Aisle products they can offer to their retail customers.
“With more than 80 percent of the SFA maker members being new, smaller, and scaling brands struggling to attain wide product distribution, the SFA’s new Infinite Aisle program allows their incredible specialty food products be discovered, sourced, and purchased by thousands of new retailers through our distributor partners,” said Leo Squatrito, vice president, member development and outreach at SFA.
SFA has teamed up with Specialty Food Partners, which facilitates the platform and brings its specialty food distributor partners to the product marketplace. SFA’s distributor members are also being onboarded with Infinite Aisle. Distributors can learn more about the platform here.
"Infinite Aisle makes SFA members' products directly available to tens of thousands of grocery stores, restaurants, and convenience stores through the distributors who sell specialty items,” said Tony Lee, founder, Specialty Food Partners. “It's free for SFA members to join, and they require no technical expertise to easily place their items for sale on the Infinite Aisle platform."
Makers can assign product attributes to their offerings and retail buyers and distributors can search Infinite Aisle by product category, subcategory, attributes such as keto or low-fat, or ownership such as women- or veteran-owned businesses, for instance. Buyers seeking local products can sort makers based on their distance from the store, Squatrito said.
SFA’s maker members can learn more about the platform here and during informational webinars. The next will be held on Jan. 28 and can be registered for here.
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